Lost Records: Bloom & Rage | REVIEW | PC

''WE ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE''

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Developed: Dont Nod

Published: Dont Nod

Genre: Mystery/Slice Of Life

Release Date: Feb 18th, 2025

Platforms: XBOX FAMILY/PC/PS5

Review copy provided by Dont Nod

Lost Records Bloom and Rage is the next narrative focused franchise to enter the catalogue for Dont Nod and it is developed and published by, you guessed it, Dont Nod. With hits like Life Is Strange and memorable titles like Jusant and Koira under the belt, Dont Nod decided, alright, we've been quiet enough, time to bring the fire once more. However does this game live up to the reputation they built? or should they have thought it over a bit more? Only one way to find out, so lets go!

''WELCOME TO DERRY''

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GAMEPLAY:

Lost Records continues the rollercoaster of a narrative that they're well known for, most notably with Life Is Strange and once again in this title, your choices matter and dictate how things play out, to a certain extent. However while Life Is Strange is basically one stand alone game in its own right, here in Lost Records, Dont Nod decides to try to put two games, which can be seen as stand alone titles or varying in distinction from one another, and they attempt to intertwine or weave them together to form some sort of continuity for the player... and it uhh.. kind of does so I suppose? albeit not very smoothly if I'm going to be perfectly honest. I mean its better piecing this story together than trying to figure out just what the heck is happening in a game like Kingdom Hearts at any given time, so I guess we should be proud of that, for all our sanities. While games from Dont Nod's catalogue usually thrive on a self contained story that has a clear point A to Point B start to finish, Lost Records tends to feel unevenly paced with its story telling and structuring with Bloom having periods of slow downs and drawn out scenes and Rage aiming to wrap things up but ultimately feeling a little.. void? If that's the right word for it. In Lost Records, a super natural event takes place that effects many involved with it, especially a group of teenage girls who aren't really sure what to make of it and don't really want to even speak of it. Basically its like a mixture of IT with Pennywise, except down here in Lost Records, they do not float down there, so sorry you stupid clown, go back to Maine or Rhode Island or wherever else on the east coast Stephen King likes to set all his novels, silly freak. However, much like the movie IT, you too will be feeling as if you're trapped in the Deadlights because just when the mystery of the supernatural event starts heating up, you're forced to focus on friendships and growing as a person of each individual teenager, completely disregarding the actual main focal point that you wish to learn about. I know I know, on paper that sounds pretty bad and while I agree its not beneficial at all, its not a completely wasteful thing. Why? well because Dont Nod at this point are masters at their craft of story telling through the minds of teenagers and young adults. So while on one hand you want to BEEP BEEP RITCHIE and gobble someone up due to your frustration, id refrain from that because I'm going to repot you to the police. Dont Nod excels in story telling through their characters and it remains the same here, not focusing on the mystery of the supernatural event sucks, obviously, but getting to learn about each character, what theyre going through mentally and how they focus on changing that and personally growing from it is heartful and intriguing and does a great job at investing you into the characters to make them more relatable, at least in my opinion.

Slow and steady is the name of the game with Lost Records as you move at a very leisurely pace as each character gets their own specific developments and player choices to choose from, some of which are going to leave you very confused like Plumbers Dont Wear Ties FMV scenes, which leave you scratching your head, or you'll come away very satisfied with your choice - its extremely hit or miss and bounces around maybe a little TOO MUCH at times that kind of pulls you out of situations that normally should emotionally resonate with the audience due to the story beat. In a nutshell its a coming of age story disguised as an eerie mission with tons of secrets to find and discover, those of which whos actual mysteries, do not start surfacing till roughly around late in the game, so by the time they do show up, you completely forgot that the game was even about that and are taken off guard with a ''oh ya, I forgot that was even in the game'' moment. It feels a tad bid disjointed and not paced very well. In my opinion it shouldve started off with the supernatural event, then slice of life character development, then back to supernatural and jump back and forth between them, not just 90% of the time focus on teenage drama when combining both narrations together shouldve been an easy and obtainable task to accomplish. Its like if the movie Fire In The Sky started with an alien abduction, then after Travis gets taken away, the story focuses on Mike's marriage, what his daughter does at school, then hour and a half run time later, the UFO shows back up, thats how Lost Records is paced. Playing the section of BLOOM for the fist time, you should run yourself around 6 hours if you stay invested in it and it focuses a lot on what I've already told you, a teen drama that focuses more on character depth instead of moving the plot forward like you'd hope, but makes up for it in a great way with the way it ends, leaving you with a huge tease of ''whats to come'' that will take you from being maybe a bit ''meh'' on the game, to instantly wanting to dive in for me to see where the story takes you next now that it finally started to pick up steam. Set in the town of Velvet Cove, the base story has you take the perspective of multiple different teenage girls, Swann, Nora, Kat and Autumn, set during the summer of 1995, which again, much like IT, has you partake in different timelines from when when they were kids and then giving you flashbacks here and there that show events of their own reunion roughly 25 years later... again... much like IT. As the story moves forward you learn of events that were the cause of them drifting apart many years prior, which coincidentally is also the reason they have come back together once more as well as they too trying to remember and figure out things for themselves due to the strange memories they're having due to their suddenly foggy memories confusing them as to the true of events that really took place, culminating with a very strange and cryptic pack addressed to all of them via their old band name, Bloom and Rage. But again, this is where it gets confusing, it jumps from past to present so much that either scenes drag on too long or the mysteries of their past come and go way too fast, making you disregard in annoyance the actual authentic interactions between each of these friends and their distinct personalities of tough, fiery, nervous, confident because you feel like they're ignoring the plot PURPOSELY, and you roll your eyes like ''OMG GET ON WITH IT ALREADY''. Which is how my party feels when I play games that let me pick my own character skins, I take forever to pick what I want to wear or what character I want to play as and just send the whole lobby into a rage filled frenzy. All I know is that they better shut up or I'm going to drive a vehicle to ''escort'' them around the map and... I do NOT think they want that, just saying.

As per usual with a Dont Nod game, much like you saw in Life Is Strange, player choices remain in the forefront in Lost Records and gives you choices that determine character's like Swann's relationships to keep them reserved or even flirtatious, but that's about the extent to where you can go per character, that is until your final summary is shown which determines the various outcomes that happen based off decisions you made the whole game, for better or for worse. In between these decisions also involve gameplay relating to puzzles and interacting with the environment around you to find clues, items, lean more or discover where to go next or what to do next with some ways of doing this is using Swann's camcorder to capture moments in time, similar to Max in Life is Strange. The puzzles and stealth sequences I actually enjoyed quite a bit because it tends to break up any story tedium and gets you more involved in playing the characters themselves rather than just feeling like you're watching a movie... I'm looking at you Kojima. When you're not focused on just the shortcomings of the game with its pacing for the story, then you'll find out that Lost Records excels in a character study like narrative that focuses a lot on the slice of life aspect you've seen in their previous games that explore the idea of friendships, humor, personal trauma that you can relate to, immersive music that fits the time period and each scene its in, great art style that matches the overall tone, etc. The game isn't all that bad as It may seem like, quite the opposite, its rather engaging and fun with lots of charm and a coming of age tale with a supernatural twist to it, which to be honest, an industry that takes itself way too seriously, definitely needs more of these types of titles.

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''FEED ME HUMAN, NO TALK''

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OVERALL:

At the end of the day, Lost Records ends up an enjoyable experience in my opinion, but with quite a few flaws along the way. Problems with pacing early on definitely might throw you out of the loop if you are only here for the supernatural portion of the story and not the slice of life aspect, game also tends to fall a little bit on the short side with Bloom having a game run time of around 6hrs, with Rage running you 3 to 4 hours at most, which combining two parts of these series, you're looking at a 10 to 11 hour experience. Jumping around too much in the timeline can also be a bit weird at first, but you adjust to it early on so I can be too harsh on that specific aspects. So while those are definitely some things to look out first, I still believe, at $40 price tag, Lost Records does hold a relatively good value based off its music, scenery, visuals, setting, decision making that keeps you engage, likable characters who can relate to with all their hardships or successes, supernatural aspect that when it finally gets dived into, leaves you in absolutely shock because I guarantee you, you wont see the ending coming, and... if you do.... then I'm pretty sure you've been talking to Miss Cleo. Damn you Miss Cleo, go back to late night advertisements on the TV guide channel, we dont like you. So with all that having been said, my verdict is clear, GameNChick says BUY NOW

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