Tomb Raider 1 was my absolutely fav game on the PS1 back in the day, I was so good at it too, did speedruns and everything.
That's wild and I'm curious what captured you. Even in 1997 I found tomb raider 1+2 to be almost unplayable. The controls are some of the worst I've ever seen and Lara plays like a stiff puppet. I've looked into the remake and I struggled to get past the first two levels. Trying to jump across certain gaps is just destillated frustration. Mario 64 came out the same year and after 5 minutes of running around in front of the castle, it instantly made Tomb Raider (and any other 3D movement before it) look ancient.
I genuinely believe Tomb Raider only became a success because of the sexualized "mature" design and marketing. It does some atmosphere right and being proper 3d at all at that time made it stand out, but with a character design that's not pure gamer brain or just the generic John McShoot it would have been all but forgotten.