Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Chapter 1 Review (PS5): Tons of Nostalgia with Little Payoff

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is the 90s nostalgia trip I’ve always wanted. It transported me back to a time of innocence when all I wanted was to have fun, ignoring what society and my parents thought. The world was full of exploration, and I experienced it all through the high definition of a 90s camcorder—the ideal medium for capturing supernatural phenomena. Unfortunately, all this excitement of revisiting my childhood was overshadowed by strange pacing, a lackluster climax, and the sense that I could remove about half the game and it would be better for it.

It was the summer of ‘95

The story of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage follows four girls–Swann, Autumn, Nora, and Kat–after strange events bring them together. This story is told in two ways, through the eyes of their adult selves in the present times and in the past as their late-teen counterparts. As the game opens up, you are about to enter a bar, worried about reconnecting with friends you haven’t seen in decades. As you flash back to your younger self and the decisions made, you steadily learn more about your quirky, average protagonist.

For me, the present-tense narrative felt dragged out, almost like an anime that is waiting for more issues of the manga to release so they have to pump it full of filler. Every moment I was in the present–bar the introduction and meeting up with a long-lost friend–felt like a chore and took me out of the nostalgic experience of the summer of ‘95. This was spurred on by the way the women constantly kept asking if they remembered what happened and ultimately danced around the true meaning of why they were there in the first place. If every present-tense section was removed except for the introduction and the ending, the game would not have changed and would have felt like it had much better pacing.

Jumping back into the past felt dreamy in a sense as everything was near what I remembered except for the obvious non-brand-specific toys littered throughout the protagonist’s room. The way she longed for connection and wanted nothing more than to spend her last summer at home doing everything she wished she could but was too afraid to try. The story of the past and the connections made by the four girls genuinely made me laugh, and feel tense, awkward, sad, and even relieved. The Don’t Nod devs showed they still know how to craft a good story and could have made it better if they focused more on the past storyline.

Branching timelines and the supernatural 

As Swann, you record your journey with the other girls as they discover the supernatural. Each decision made affects your relationship with each of the girls and some even affect how events unfold in the future. This is a mechanic that Don’t Nod is known for, but it’s not implemented that well here. Knowing that these major decisions are affecting your future selves would have made the game more suspenseful if it culminated in a big reveal of what changed at the end. Instead, you see small changes happen in the present segments such as keys appearing that ultimately make it feel like the decisions you made didn’t have a major effect on how the future turned out.

Jumping back to the summer of ‘95, Swann grabs her trusty camcorder and documents the journey of the girls as they discover the supernatural. This build-up is slow and methodical but it works extremely well from moments where you are lost in the woods seeing shadow figures through the lens of the world’s greatest technology before HD to capturing strange lights and plunging head-first into the unknown by chanting a curse. The way Don’t Nod played out these scenes captured both the innocence of childhood and growing up as well as the dark undertone of the surreal and paranormal.

While much of the game had me giddy from the group’s childhood experiences, all of this build-up ultimately led nowhere. While I won’t spoil the ending, in typical Don’t Nod fashion that happened in Life is Strange, the devs made you look one way while ignoring the true culprit. Unfortunately, the true culprit was very lackluster and felt like it came out of the blue with no subtle hints of its existence whatsoever. The ending of the chapter felt like it was going in a clear direction with a large payoff but the devs decided to perform a massive rugpull that took me completely out of the story. While there is a chance that the second chapter could redeem the story by taking the characters in the direction they appeared to be heading, it is unlikely now that the big realization has been shown.

The Verdict

I am afraid to say that Don’t Nod simply dropped the ball with half of the first chapter of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Luckily, they caught themselves, sparing the other half from being a complete disaster. Much of the game was great and had me re-experiencing my youth in ways I had forgotten. The story of four girls wanting to reimagine the world they are in and escape together was compelling and the way it was presented through the eyes of an awkward teen with a love for movies and the best technology on the planet for capturing the paranormal made it all the better. While playing in the past was strong, the present story kept taking me out of the experience as it slowed everything to a halt and filled in the empty space with near-meaningless conversation of older women who just wouldn’t get to the point.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Chapter 1 was reviewed on PlayStation 5 with a code provided by Don’t Nod. It is also available for PC and Xbox.

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