Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Steam Charts & Stats

This was the most boring story Ive seen from a dontnod game. The story goes nowhere for the first half of the game and once it finally starts picking up pace it ends with a disappointing ending. The game is basically a conversation simulator for the first half, all you do is just select dialog options and solve one or two annoying puzzles. Graphics look nice but the facial animations are low quality. Not even up to the standards of previous life is strange games. I wouldn't bother wasting time on this honestly.

[h1]I want to erase my memories and play the game again.[/h1] After completing the game, I felt completely drained. I was overwhelmed with every emotion I could possibly feel at that moment. The game does an incredible job of conveying the atmosphere of those years, as well as a great job of developing the EVERY character. I felt like I was immersed in the game and empathized with all the characters. This is a story that you need to experience for yourself. All I want to say is that the game is worth playing. The gameplay is smooth, and when needed, it's like a movie or an interactive film. [b]I want to erase my memories... and play the game.... again.[/b] [h3]See you in hell[/h3]

This is the WORST game Don’t Nod has made to date. I’ll get into the details shortly, but first, let me be clear: I will not be buying another Don’t Nod game unless they prove they can deliver something genuinely good again. I’m done giving them the benefit of the doubt. This game was a complete waste of time — 12 hours of my life gone, and yes, it really was that short. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage tries to pull you in with nostalgia and vibes — and that could’ve worked if there was ever a point where the story actually hooked you. But that moment never comes. The game consists of just two tapes, which is frankly absurd. Even Tell Me Why managed three episodes and told a more consistent, compelling story. But the worst part? How little actually happens in the game. It’s overloaded with forced drama and hollow emotional beats that feel completely disconnected from any meaningful story development. It’s like the game wants you to feel something — anything — without ever giving you a real reason to care. The drama isn’t grounded in narrative — it is the narrative. And that just doesn’t work. The plot is a ham-fisted attempt at making a point — but about what, exactly? One of the main characters, Kat, hates her family because they took her hunting, and she developed PTSD from it. Fine, trauma can be complex — but the game takes that thread and runs straight into absurdity. The moment she’s diagnosed with leukemia, she just goes completely off the rails and decides to destroy her family’s livelihood... for what? Some kind of poetic justice? A tantrum against the world? It’s never made clear. Kat isn’t layered or tragic — she’s written like a hateful, self-destructive ball of rage and psychopathy, and the game treats her like she’s deep or admirable. But there’s no grounding for her choices. Her emotional spiral feels cheap, not earned — and the story never does the work to make her actions feel human or meaningful. It’s just drama for the sake of drama. And then there’s Corey — just your typical one-dimensional asshole, shoved into the story for the sole purpose of being a white male villain the game can kill off without consequence and then pat itself on the back for serving “justice.” He has no nuance, no believable motivation — he exists purely to be hated and eliminated. It’s painfully obvious and insultingly simplistic. Instead of writing a complex antagonist or even attempting moral tension, the game goes for the easiest, most performative route possible. And it expects us to cheer for it. 1/10 because some of the music is good.

Many LIS games involve coming of age drama and I've finished them with no problem, so I thought I was mentally prepared for this one, too. I was wrong. The visuals and the music are great as usual, but the story and the characters are way below my expectation. In second part of the game, Tape 2, many characters suddenly grow OOC and start behaving strange. I just couldn't relate to the story anymore and was basically waiting for the cringe to end. Also, many choices given in the game feel forced. Playing as an awkward girl who has low self esteem and is desperately trying to make friends, you have to be complying or even flattering toward your friends so they don't get upset and dislike you, even when sometimes you know straight away they are making poor decisions. For many times I was left to choose between bad options and worse ones. For those looking for a choices matter game, just FYI, your choices don't really matter in the long run anyway since the ending will be largely the same. And the ending is not necessarily an ending but a cliffhanger, leaving the story unfinished. Save your time and energy for something else.

As a big fan of the first Life Is Strange, I had big hopes after all the positive reviews. But I can't understand why people praise this game so much. The dialogue is so cringe, so over-the-top. Nobody talks like this in real life. It's so bad. It's not that the actors are bad, but just the way it's written, how they talk to each other. It's also hard to follow sometimes. Multiple dialogue at the same time, or some other sound is way louder, so you can't hear a thing they say. But that isn't the biggest problem. I could handle that. But the cringe conversations omg... I just couldn't play it anymore. It's terrible.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.