I’ve had a good time playing this but it’s a bit flawed. Not being able to save is already mentioned with TheQuietGamer’s review. Whilst I’d have preferred to save, I do think that you can get by for the most part because the many items scattered is a way of the developers balancing the challenge. You will get many big medkits and definitely more ammo near the end. So you shouldn’t feel you’re at a big disadvantage. I’d feel you can cheese most fights if you keep all the consumables that you collected throughout. I have more issues with the game’s platforming. There have been a few times where I died because it was hard to judge where you land when you jump. And when that happens, it’s instant death. It is this that makes the lack of save apparent because you’ll have to do the level again. Granted most of the levels are short and it didn’t happen constantly but it can still be annoying. Whilst the game is not big on puzzles, the focus lies more on platforming and staying alive since some of the traps are instant death too. Still though, I’m impressed with the game on the GBA. It kept my attention the entire time and it didn’t overstay its welcome. If it was a full priced game at the time of release, then it wouldn’t be worth it because it’s too short and not impressive enough for what you pay. As a curiosity for a TR fan and keeping retro gaming in mind, then it’s worth checking out for cheap.

Things start off looking pretty great for The Prophecy. It uses a top-down perspective to create faux 3D environments in a similar manner to the outstanding Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge, which naturally allows it to bring nearly all of Lara's trademark acrobatic capabilities to the table. It isn't long though before you begin to notice a really odd flaw. There's no music! Outside of combat encounters the only thing you'll hear is the protagonist's footfalls. Now, normally I'm not the type of guy who would take issue with this. I've honestly seen reviews where people have complained about that in other games and thought they were overreacting as I wasn't bothered by it myself in them. Here however, the absence of background tunes most of the time crafts an extremely dull atmosphere that just serves to amplify how boring the gameplay is.

The experience quickly falls into an excruciatingly unexciting loop of running through maze-like environments pushing buttons that open paths containing more buttons intended to open up more doors until you eventually reach the exit. There's a single puzzle in this entire slog that used in maybe three stages overall. Otherwise your obstacles are strictly spikes, fire traps, and the occasional foe to shoot. It's far from fun, but at least they gave the gunplay a helpful auto-targeting system to work around the GBA's controls.

In fact, aside from this simply not being enjoyable to play, I'd say the single severe design fault from the devs would be the complete lack of an ability save your progress. Instead you have to rely on old school passwords to pick up roughly where you left off. This doesn't sound terrible until you die or are forced to step away and lose your stockpile of medkits and special ammo. It isn't solely irritating, but at odds with the actual structure as well. Early levels are littered with health packs presumably placed there to prepare you for the later ones where their appearance is less common and enemies are more plentiful. Having your items stripped away creates this strange, unintentional difficulty imbalance that inadvertently causes the GBA's hardware to come off as more limited than it actually is. So Croft fans, I recommend you avoid this adventure.

4.5/10