At long last, we return for the grand finale of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. If you’ll recall from my previous review, I was a little underwhelmed by the game’s first Tape, and I had hoped the second would pull it out of a tailspin and present something worthwhile. Unfortunately, as I played through the entirety of the second act, hoping for some delivery on the game’s bigger ideas, I was once again left wanting.
Since I have already covered the first Tape fairly comprehensively, this review will be a little different from my usual style. The majority of the game remains largely the same, so I’m not going to go into laborious detail about gameplay or audio-visual design. Instead, I want to focus on the most crucial element of this game that doesn’t work: the overall narrative design.
I touched on it in my first review, but I want to elaborate on the structure of this game’s narrative because for me, it doesn’t really work—not only as a story split into two parts, but also when taken as a whole. At its core, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is two stories: the first is about a group of four girls who find each other over the summer and seemingly become bonded by a supernatural event, only to discover that one of the girls has terminal cancer.
The second takes place in the present, as the three friends reunite after receiving a mysterious package and try to remember what led them to swear to never see each other again after that summer.
The problem is, neither of these stories flows in a way that feels natural. I can understand if it’s leaning into the name and going for a short-snippets-of-multiple-memories kind of delivery, but that really doesn’t feel like what’s happening here. One thing you’ll notice immediately while playing is how much shorter Tape 2 is compared to its predecessor. Despite the reduced length, it doesn’t serve as a grand climax or meaningfully build on many of the concepts established in the first part.
“Either taken as a whole or split into two parts, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage doesn’t quite work.”
Much like the first Tape, it spends a little too much time meandering and delivering small scenes of the girls interacting, rather than building a cohesive narrative from the many plot points introduced at the end of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1. It feels incredibly top-heavy and like it’s rushing through the moments that should be the most important and resonant.
What results is a game filled with scenes that feel structurally out of place. While they still end up being sweet and emotionally resonant, their place in the overall narrative feels independent of each other. This is a structural problem in its own right, which is exacerbated when you consider Tape 1 and Tape 2 together. Taken as a whole, it spends far too long building a supernatural element that never fully manifests, fails to establish clear stakes until arguably two-thirds of the way through, and then doesn’t deliver on any of it.
“Lost Records: Bloom & Rage could have been a beautifully tragic story with a much stronger structure.”
I won’t go too deep into detail for the sake of spoilers, but believe me when I say the supernatural element—something most Don’t Nod narrative games are known for—is completely superfluous in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2. It doesn’t really appear until the very end, resolving a problem that could have been addressed in a hundred better ways—namely by the characters themselves—and contributes to a plot point that feels profoundly lazy.
And it’s all so genuinely disappointing, because you can clearly see where a great game could have existed. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage could have been a beautifully tragic story with a much stronger structure. Tape 1 could have centred on the four girls finding each other and forming a deep friendship, only to discover that one of them has terminal cancer, and Tape 2 could have focused on the emotional fallout of that revelation. You can see small snippets of this version of the story buried within the game as it stands.
Despite her illness, Kat wants to continue living like a teenager and enjoying her summer. Her parents and sister want her to stay locked in her room out of an abundance of caution. Autumn spirals, similarly trying to rein in Kat’s recklessness. The player, acting as Swann, is positioned to make meaningful decisions about what is best for Kat. Do you encourage her to take it easy and focus on her health? Do you side with Autumn, even though it goes against Kat’s wishes? Or do you support Nora, whose punk-rock encouragement of Kat’s more destructive behaviour is clearly a willful ignorance of reality?
It would have made for a much more meaningful and cohesive story, eliminated the need for a nonessential supernatural element and actually added more weight to the present-day storyline about why the girls drifted apart. And since the game effectively scores you at the end based on who you formed the deepest connections with and whether you helped reconnect the group in the present, it could have gone much further in making the outcome feel consequential. Instead, despite offering a relatively conclusive ending, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage still feels like it denies the player genuine closure.
Additionally, I acknowledged that I wouldn’t focus extensively on the audio or visuals in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2, as the same strengths and weaknesses still apply. However, there was one new visual glitch I noticed throughout the game: in some scenes, silhouetted figures would appear and instantly vanish as soon as you caught a glimpse of them. At first, I thought this was something that might tie into the story, but it never did, and it just made me believe all the more that it was a strange visual bug.
Either taken as a whole or split into two parts, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage doesn’t quite work. Maybe that’s not entirely fair—it kind of works, but only in moments that function independently of the overarching narrative. As a collection of scattered memories anchored around the loss of a cherished friend, it is truly beautiful, and I couldn’t say I didn’t end up caring about these characters. But had the game built a much stronger story around them, I would have cared a hundred times more.
