Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Review (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, & PC)

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage takes a deep dive into two of the most memorable moments in life you’ll remember. There’s the awkward teenage years when you’re just learning to grow comfortable in your own skin. You have huge dreams and desires that may not always be straightforward but definitely inspired. 

Yet oftentimes, events never play out exactly how you plan them. Friendships are lost, dreams forgotten, and the reality of adulting gradually creeps in. Soon, you’re in your forties, having made peace with who you are. Your life has probably found a solid footing and a daily routine to fall back on. 

Then old friends hit you up to reconnect. Old friends you haven’t spoken to in decades. It’s always an uneasy meet-up, with each one of you being different – grown. You don’t immediately jump into the banter you enjoyed. 

Rather, take a seemingly lifetime drinks-at-the-bar making small talk before actually diving into the conversations that matter. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is exactly that, only infused with an intriguing paranormal mystery and the Life is Strange beauty that is narrative adventure gaming. 

If you’re yet to play Don’t Nod’s newest entry into the sub-genre, here are 1000 reasons why you should stop what you’re doing and boot up the game NOW. Tag along as we break down all you can expect in our Lost Records: Bloom & Rage review below.

Old Friends Reunite

Being a narrative adventure game, it’ll be difficult to review Lost Records: Bloom & Rage without treading dangerously close to spoiler territory. However, I’ll do my best to skim over the most significant pros and cons worth mentioning. For starters, the story quickly nabs your undivided attention with its ingenious juxtaposition between the summer of 1995 and the year 2022. With a 27-year difference, the environments and character arcs oblige to the themes and events you might expect.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage kicks off with four former friends – Nora, Autumn, Kat, and Swan – reuniting at a dingy bar that holds significance to their past. They aren’t here out of their own accord. Rather, a mysterious package has been sent to the girls, forcing them to break their pact to never speak again since the summer of 1995. 

So, what happened in 1995 that would make seemingly close friends drift apart? Well, get ready to have that question linger alongside many more that Lost Records: Bloom & Rage has a slick way of adding to the list. You’ll definitely have more questions than answers even as you try to piece together the current places our characters are in, how they reconnect with one another, and what type of friendship they shared 27 years ago.

While it seems like a lot for Don’t Nod to tackle seamlessly, they’ve surprisingly found impressive ways to create a cohesive package. Digesting, the story flows rather smoothly down the throat, never irritating the gut with its suspense. Instead, you can’t help tagging along on the mystery that lies at the heart of the rural town of Velvet Cove, where the characters grew up.

Present to Past

Part of the reason why Lost Records: Bloom & Rage’s questions and ultimate suspenseful nature never frustrate is the intriguing aspect of the storytelling. Present-day catch-up between the characters is narrated in first-person. This creates a more immersive playthrough as you delicately tread past events. You can feel the unease as the characters begin to settle in their mixed emotions about reuniting.

As the story cuts back to the past, you switch to third-person. This pulls the environment further away from your lens, allowing you to take in the surroundings. It detaches you from the characters, thus fully appreciating their approach to events and details in the environment. The present is about the player experience, fully immersing in interacting with the characters and connecting with them. The past, however, is about the characters’ own recollection of the past and appreciating their experience from their point of view. 

Moreover, each character is distinctly written and portrayed to gradually attach yourself to their personalities. As we’re reeled from the present day into the summer of 1995 to when the friendship group first met, emotions sweep over you. There are the characters’ own real-time responses to events, which, thanks to their distinct character, all translate differently.

Besides each character’s emotive writing, you, the player, also deeply resonate with the conversations. Whether relatability to the more recent 2022 slang and pandemic references or the deep nostalgia for ‘90s tropes, your own relation to the story goes a long way to grip your attention further and deeper than expected.

Yet, you’ll probably find some tidbits of conversations a little cringe. After all, having adults write teen drama tends to have its downsides, as some conversations feel forced. But these are hardly rampant enough to veer on the edge of annoying.

Up Close and Personal

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage has truly crafted some deeply memorable characters. They don’t just have different personalities but morals, dreams, and deep desires. Swann is a quirky introvert who can sometimes say the wrong thing, but you can see that she cares deeply. Kat is the “lightcracker” of the group, often silly and strong-willed.

Nora’s always down for a good time, and so on and so forth. With each character interaction, emotions are injected into the shared moments. It’s clear Don’t Nod has put quite a lot of effort into characterization, perhaps to a heavy extent. As much as by the end of the game, each character will feel like someone you’ve known for a long time, the heavy focus on the characters may have taken away from story development. 

Unforgettable Memories

Yet that’s the nature of games like this; case in point, Life is Strange. They take a heck of a long time to set their plot and can feel like a slog but ultimately well worth sticking around for. Speaking of Life is Strange, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage has amended quite a few things that bring quality-of-life changes to the genre.

Firstly, the camcorder Swann carries around. It ties into the story where you use the camcorder to record music videos of the characters performing as part of the Bloom & Rage rock band. Watching your own directed and recorded videos with your friends feels joyous as you thrust them into the box of the memories you’ll share together. 

Moreover, your friends are incredibly supportive of your videography, often willing to wait for you to take snapshots of random things on your escapades or even call you up to take a snapshot of something they cherish. It all neatly ties into your adventure, feeling like an integral part of the story that’s enjoyable.

But the camcorder also serves as a collectible of sorts. You’ll have objectives like taking X number of birds or pictures of your cat by the end of your playthrough. But you can also take random snapshots of details in the environment you find interesting. Thereafter, you can go to the “memoir” section of the menu and sift through your collections. You can edit and swap snapshots to create your very own documentary. 

Welcome Changes

The snapshots can sometimes reveal a voiceover of the characters reminiscing about the item in the picture. And these voiceovers can often lead to exciting discoveries about the friendship group or even the environment itself. Combined, the camcorder seamlessly blends into the game in a natural way.

Rather than feel like filler, it serves as a nice way to grow closer to the characters and even feel like you’re becoming more familiar with the world. This hasn’t been the case in most narrative adventures, which can often feel disjointed in its plot, gameplay, and collectible minigames. Some narrative adventures have limited player agency.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, however, feels like it wants to be an active participant in its story adventure. Even in the dialogue choices you make, they feel like clever ways to engage you while adding impact down the line. 

Verdict

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage isn’t quite done with us yet. This is only Tape One, titled “Bloom,” that leaves us with more questions than answers. The second and last part of the adventure game called Tape Two: Rage will launch on April 15. Judging by the name, it’s bound to reveal some quite disturbing events to the dark mystery only scarcely introduced here.

So far, the first part has done an excellent job of setting the stage. It feels like its sole intention is to introduce us to the characters in such deep and memorable ways. Now, you’ll have to hang onto those memorable personalities to discover the hidden mystery in Tape Two. 

It takes a thunderstorm to break up a close-knit friend group, so much so that they swear never to speak to one another. When they’re forced to reunite 27 years later, the air is tense and filled with an ominous chill that travels down the spine. What could have happened in Velvet Cove, Michigan, in the summer of 1995? It possibly has something to do with the paranormal that I personally cannot wait to find out.