Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2

Warning: While this review doesn't contain spoilers for Tape 2: Rage, it does contain spoilers for Tape 1: Bloom.

I thought Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 was a good, but flawed, first half of the coming of age story. A group of teenage girls all come back together as adults. One of them is delivered a mysterious package after 20+ years telling them to remember their promise.

The characters and character development was great. I loved the soundtrack, along with being able to document your journey with the girls via Swann's camera. Where it fell apart was that it was a technical mess, and it was way too long. It really started to drag. The story didn't move forward that much until the very end, right before the credits rolled. That said, it was only half of a story.

Well, the other half of the story is finally here. While I do think Tape 2 is an improvement over Tape 1, we still have pacing problems and technical issues.

Tape 2 of Lost Records begins with the fallout from the girls stunt at the bar, and the revelation that Kat is suffering from Leukemia. Kat doesn't have much time left. One of my biggest complaints about the first tape was the pacing and how long it took for things to get going. This is kind of a good news/bad news situation.

The good news with Tape 2 is that they kick things into high gear pretty much from the start. We jump forward in time a few weeks, the friend group is now fractured, Swann is being punished for her part in the concert at the bar, and she's packing up her room before she moves away at the end of the summer. The other girls are all dealing with their own issues, with Kat basically being placed on lockdown at her house, Autumn taking the news extremely hard, and Nora going away for a few weeks to visit her mom.

If there is one thing this game is fantastic at, it's the character writing and development. I love all of these characters. It's really is heartbreaking seeing all of these girls become the best of friends in the first tape—only for everything to start coming apart. At least in my playthrough there was one member of the group who seemed to pretty much break away from the rest. And it did feel like my actions and dialogue choices contributed to that. So now that the full story is out, it is very much worth it to go back and play through multiple times to see the different directions the story can go. 

Now for the bad news. It's funny how I have the opposite criticism here than I did with the first tape. I felt Tape 1 was too long and probably could have been an hour shorter. While Tape 2 I felt was too short and felt rushed, like it could have used another hour.

It took me around eight hours or so to complete Tape 1, and most of that was because of the camera feature. I would do a lot of exploring, trying to record as much as I could and complete all of the memoirs. While the same recording mechanic is in Tape 2, it's extremely short, as this one only took me around four hours to complete. I didn't do much exploring, as it seemed like Tape 2 was a lot more linear than the first one.

There are only a few locations to travel to, and not a lot of opportunities to record things, since we spend a lot time in cutscenes or conversations. It feels like a mad dash to the finish line. While I did enjoy this as a follow up to Tape 1, I just wish there was a little bit more here, especially when it comes time for the big payoff at the end—which is where confusion sets in.

Once again we have more technical issues. Thankfully, it seems the problem with frame rates has been fixed. While playing Tape 1, the game was struggling as hard as possible to keep a steady frame rate, and I had numerous crashes. Thankfully I didn't encounter any of this in Tape 2. What I did encounter, however, is that the audio overlapping is back once again, and sometimes it's even worse. One time I had three characters talking at once, all speaking their own sentences. Also, the lip synching at times is just terrible, with the dialogue not matching the characters' mouth movements at times. 

In terms of the overall story, I will say this: with the story of the girls, their friendship, and their reunion as adults, I do feel like the payoffs and endings were very well done. At the same time, as the credits started rolling, I sat there scratching my head in confusion.

While I can't go into detail because of spoilers, I was an emotional wreck by the end—t least with the ending that I got—and felt it was a bitter sweet way to cap off and conclude one of the story threads... Or so I thought.

The other thing is that we pretty much don't get any explanation as to what exactly the Abyss is, how it got there, or how exactly this thing works, except that it requires some kind of sacrifice, I guess?

The story of the friend group I did enjoy. It appears there can be a number of different ways that the story can end. In the end, this is about the story of this group of friends that started when they were kids, and ends with them finally being able to get closure as adults. 

Whatever emotion I felt by the ending of this game, however, was instantly undone by an unnecessary and ridiculous scene right before the credits start, and a post-credits scene which now makes things even more confusing—by leaving it very open for a sequel.

There are now so many unanswered questions, and a lot of things that just make no sense, such as how a certain item appearing in the future is even possible. 

With all my criticism of the ending, however, I did really enjoy Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Now that we've got the complete story, I hope we eventually do get a sequel to answer some of these lingering questions.

This game hit me on a personal level as well. As I get older in life, I do think back a lot about my childhood friends and how I haven't heard from them in a very long time. This game really does a great job of driving home the life lesson that all of us have, or will experience, where the group of friends you had as kids most likely won't be the same group of friends you have when you get older.

People move away, move on, discover themselves, and sometimes end up in careers, jobs, and lives that they never thought they would have as kids. Life takes us in directions we probably weren't expecting. When you do eventually meet your old friends again as adults, your interactions with them may be a simple, "Hello, how are you, goodbye," and that's it. 

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2 is an improvement over Tape 1. I feel like the story of the girls did come to a satisfying conclusion by the end of the game. Technical issues, like horrific lip synching, unanswered questions, and a sequel-bait post-credits scene kind of brought down the experience.

But at the very least, in some ways, I would say that even if a sequel never happens, I was happy with the path I chose to the end of the journey for Swann and her friends. I just wish we had gotten a bit more to make it feel like a definitive ending, where the story could continue rather than feeling like a Tape 3 should be coming, which never will.