I don’t think I would’ve looked at this game twice if it weren’t for Don’t Nod made Life is Strange. That is an awesome game.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a game very similar to Life is Strange. You’re playing as Swann, a girl, couple of years younger than Max, and the game takes place in the late summer while school is still out. Swann is a loner who likes to film with her video camcorder, and one day she meets some new friends and they get to share some experiences by the last days of summer.
From there the story plays out in two parts. The first part is setting the stage and you get to know Swann and her friends. In the second part the game ties the knot and completes the story. I was thinking this would be a 5 chapter story like Life is Stange, and I would have to wait for the rest of the chapters, but it seems to me that part 2 is the final ending.
I understand that I’m not the target audience for this game, but I had some real issues with it, especially part one.
The kids are very cringe. It’s in the things that they say, how they say it, and the voice acting. It’s also in the things that they do. I can’t remember being so cringe at their age and if I compare it to my teenage son, the goal of his whole being right now is to be as not-cringe as possible. So I don’t find this portrayal very believable. I don’t like the script, what the voice actors do with it and I don’t like the main protagonist Swann.
I think it’s her insecurities that really gets at me. I understand what they’re going for in the story but I don’t like playing her. It’s like playing my own internal monologue at times and it’s painful.
The game gets better in part two, just like Life is Strange got better once you got a few chapters in. You see a fair bit of character development. The girls get tougher and more confident. The game gets a bit more enjoyable. Then it ends. It ends just when it starts to get good, and that is a bummer.
I think the story is quite good, but the ending didn’t hit me as hard as Life is Strange. I think it was because I had just started to like the characters and then it ended. If they had capitalized a bit more on the character development, I think this could have been really great.
One more thing that I really didn’t like was the whole romancing part of the game. I have no problem with girls kissing girls, but it felt so unnecessary. There was no place for it in the story which was about a group of friends and their shared experiences. It felt like the romancing was only there as a game mechanic. A lazy way of making you more invested.
This was a miss for me, but it did have its moments and I started to like the game by the end.
I rate the game as OKAY.
Replay 