Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Steam Charts & Stats

I was about to rage quit this game multiple times but persevered till the end. I should have saved money and watched it on YouTube, there I could have fast forwarded it and finished it in under an hour. The game is just filler conversations. It doesn’t hold a candle to LiS 1 & 2. The story & gameplay is garbage. If you’re looking for a walking simulator, look for some other game.

Oh my god What a game! At first I thought i will be something like more supernatural i guess it was but not really, but still it really got me. The story is well written, I had goosebumps so many times! It's really obvious that it was made by the developers who made Life is Strange saga. The End was really sad but still enjoyable. And also See you in Hell! You'll fit in well! 12/10

Really enjoyed it, like most Don't Nod games. The 90's setting resonated with my old teenage self and the story was much more personal and affecting than I thought it would be. Every time I thought it was going to get over-the-top supernatural it pulled back and remained surprisingly grounded. However it is intentionally very slow paced to cement character and locations, so if you are hoping for even the slightest bit of action in the first 4 hours you are going to be disappointed, it's not that sort of game. Hoping for the sequel they so obviously hint at.

Really brings in a time of when you were young just out with friends. The story is pretty long. I'm not finished with it, yet, but I will be back for an update once I do. (UPDATE!!!) This game is so heart touching. Also very long, but worth it. Just when you think it's over it's not and I love that. This game shows a side that no one really likes to talk about when it comes to the cycle of life. I'm 30 and I found myself thinking about what happens next while I was at work. The soundtracks are pretty good, the sound effects, picture quality is really f'n good as well. I most def recommend this game to anyone who loves to get lost into story mode games. I do find it worth the price.

I was excited to play this game because I am a big fan of the Life is Strange series and those type of storytelling games. I was also hopeful due to the very positive reviews But unfortunately this game disappointed me and was a struggle to complete. The dialogue was very cringe and often hard to listen to. I felt as though the dialogue was unnatural. The characters weren't very likable and I ended up often finding them annoying. The game had a lot of glitches also. I finished the game with more questions than answers. This whole game is a big lead up that keeps building and building but there isn't a satisfying payoff. I can handle cringe dialogue if I care enough about the world and characters. The characters are a big reason why I love Life is Strange. The time travel abilities made that game more interesting and motivated me to play it in different ways. But Bloom and Rage is just missing something. I played this game with someone and they just found the game too boring to continue. SPOILERS! I didn't understand the 'paranormal' aspect of the game and how it actually affected the main characters. What is the abyss and what does it actually do? Is it alive and have a conscious? Did it actually give the main characters abilities or just personality changes? Why do none of the characters acknowledge the supernatural lights or weird changes? Why does it still affect the characters in the future? I also felt very thrown off by the ending scene which implies that the story is unfinished and makes me even more confused.

Love the studio, loved their previous games. They definitely tried something different but overall fell short. Starting with what I found were positives, the graphics looked amazing, especially little details like eyes and the characters tearing up at emotional moments. There was some dialogue that was interesting and funny, a few characters felt interesting and had depth. The mysterious element was enticing enough to make me want to complete the game. Now I digress onto the copious problems and things that just didn’t work. Originally I played for about an hour and thought the game was awful if I’m honest, very cringy and forced dialogue felt out of place and weird. I stuck it out due to the significant amount of very positive reviews about the story being good. I then suffered through very poor dialogue that made me visibly cringe; from the 90’s style mic effect that made the characters voices sound awful, to the very noticeable de-sync between mouths of characters and their voices, kept breaking any immersion. Also being forced to take 5 different videos of a cat is not a good gameplay choice, sure having the ability to do it is fine but the forcing you to do it while the main character says the most unhinged and cringiest stuff I have ever heard is not the play. The pacing was very slow and the relationship between the girls seemed to jump very sporadically. Very obvious PC themes sprinkled through the game were hard to ignore when the future selves kept making comments on anything that was offensive. I also couldn’t help but notice the only male character that had more than 3 lines was portrayed as the most bigoted, racist and homophobic character I have seen in a hot minute. He also beats his gf and young, terminally ill sick girls. Spoiler also the funny realisation that every ending includes this characters death was interesting. Spoiler Finally this game definitely has an audience unfortunately it will not be the majority. If you like the sound of a cozy, socially awkward coming of age lesbian BFF story then you will enjoy the game. TLDR: good graphics, some depth with characters, very bad pacing, cringy dialogue. Has a very obvious intended audience

Game: exists Me: wow this is cute :) Game: emotional pain enters the chat Me: damn… same. When does it get better?? [strike]Sorry for the drama, heartbreak turned me into a full-time sad girl[/strike] fuck it. healed and hotter than ever. What about Lost Records?... it's just perfect, play it

So much build up and no pay off. This game has a lot of wonderful moments but that’s all they are… moments. This game goes at a snails pace the entire time, get kinda interesting in the last hour and then never explains most of the questions it brings up. Then it has the audacity to try and set up a sequel when this game doesn’t even feel finished to me. This sucks. I was really looking forward to a game like life is strange but it falls flat where it matters most. Maybe I missed the point of the game but I just can’t say I enjoyed it much. Overall, it’s pretty bad.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage may not live up to the first Life is Strange game, but it is still a fantastic experience. While this game plays extremely similar to Life is Strange, the characters were not as relatable or memorable as Life is Strange 1, and the story was not as emotional or engaging as either of Don’t Nod’s Life is Strange games. The game starts off quite slow and has a good bit of awkward dialog. I don’t mind the slowness as Life is Strange can be quite slow, but the awkward dialog was at times quite awkward to sit though. I get that the characters are supposed to be awkward teenagers so I think the awkwardness was intentional, but the end result is still that you as the player has to sit though hours of awkward dialog. It took a little over 4 hours for the game to start picking up in pace and the characters to find their strides. After that, the game gets a lot more engaging, but I was still enjoying my time before then. I always find it hard to write good reviews for these sorts of story heavy games because I don’t like spoiling anything and there isn’t much gameplay to discuss. As with Don’t Nod’s Life is Strange series, you walk around fantastically realized environments with sublime atmosphere. Most of the game takes place in interactive cutscenes where you are making dialog choices. There are also many parts where you can choose to interact with various object to learn more about the space and the games characters. This games dialog system did have some notable changes from Life is Strange. For example, you are no longer notified when a decision is going to have major impacts on the story. This did make the dialog feel more immersive, but it also made it harder for me to notice when my decisions actually impacted the story since no decision really stuck out in my mind as something to remember. I think the game may be more like Life is Strange 2 where individual decisions don’t typically change things, instead it’s a collection of decisions that come together to change things. Another change to the dialog system that makes it a lot more natural is that a lot of dialog choice are timed, but if you wait, you may hear another character say something that adds additional dialog choices. Overall I quite liked this system. There were times it made dialog feel a bit awkward with the timing, but overall it worked really well. In terms of story, the game has you play as Swan, who by my math is 43, reminiscing about the summer when she was 16. I think more time is spent playing as the 16 year old version, but you do spend a good amount of time at both ages. I found the contrast interesting and I really enjoyed the story. One thing I’m a little mixed on, and while I’m going to say this in what I think is a fairly spoiler free way, is how the game ends and handles its central mystery.[spoiler] While the ending did feel fairly satisfying, it also raised more questions than it answered and a sequel was very much set up. I really hope this game sold well enough that they will make one, because I would like to see where the story goes and I would happily play more of this, but it’s also a little annoying that the central mystery didn’t really get solved.[/spoiler] Unfortunately this is an Unreal Engine game so it doesn’t run that great. It did seem to have less stutters than many other Unreal Engine games, but it did still have a few. Performance wasn’t great either. While many areas I was getting above 100fps at max settings with DLSS-U on and DLSS-FG off, there were also areas and times when I couldn’t even hold 50fps on my RTX 4080. While this game looks far from bad, it doesn’t looks good enough to justify that sort of performance. Unfortunately, thees sorts of issue seems to be extremely common with this engine. On a more positive note, this game does have partial support for 21:9, which I think might be a first for Don’t Nod. I’ve played a handful of other games by them and all of them have black bars on the sides throughout. This game has black bars during cutscenes, but when you are allowed to walk around, and sometimes when you have camera control during dialog, the game rendered in beautiful 21:9, although there were small maybe 10 or 20 pixel wide black bars. Like Life is Strange, this game has some fantastic music that is continuously re-used throughout the game. However, I think certain tracks were a bit overused, making them lose the emotional connection to the story that tracks had in Life is Strange. Overall, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is fantastic. If Don’t Nod isn’t making more Life is Strange games, I’m really glad they made this since it does have a similar feel, even if it isn’t quite as good. The game is a bit shorter than Don’t Nod’s Life is Strange games, taking me only 15.7 hours to complete, compared to the ~20 hours those took me. There definitely is more they can do with this story and characters, so it would have be nice to have a 2nd tape even if it only had 1 side. I really hope this sold well enough that they make a sequel because I would absolutely be interested in more of this.

I like it at the start, social interaction and how realistic and unique the choice system time limit were. but after a while the writing and game design kinda falling flat and I kinda lost my connection to the main character. gameplay wise there is too much annoying task that required me to do. like finding things among the dark and messy room and the other characters just sitting doing nothing but complain while Im going thru stuff. I swear I know its normal that npc just waiting for you to do things, but normally they will be waiting for you off screen or visually busy doing something. but in this game, they just sitting next to you, chilling, and tease/ jokingly complain that you took too long. this plus the annoyance I got from the pointless task get me to the point i started to feel like im just an errands girl of the group. even worst in more serious situation nobody doing anything except yelling at me what do things. that's the point where I feel so disconnected. the story is not believable for me anymore. writing wise, at the beginning I'm very invest with the character. everything is good up until tape 2 the main character changed so much that I can't relate to her any more. there are a lot of times the game forced me to pick thing i don't want to do without other choices to the point i want to quit. playing their previous game and like a lot of them especially LIS2 has special place in my heart, I give it a lot of faith and push through till I finished but nothing changes. I really despise how things resolved. I don't know how to put it without spoilers but it's the only dontnod games i played that didn't leave me with satisfaction. I tried checking the alternate scenario I case I just picking bad choices and missed something along the way but I assume that won't change things. the art, the lighting especially is good and magical.