Lost Records Bloom & Rage Review (PC) – Not A Number One Hit

I’ve been playing Lost Records Bloom & Rage, the latest narrative-driven adventure game from Don’t Nod. The question I had going in was, can Lost Records Bloom & Rage stand out amongst an increasingly crowded genre? And more importantly, is it worth your time?

Game Name: Lost Records Bloom & Rage
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): Don’t Nod
Developer(s): Don’t Nod Montréal
Release Date: February 18th 2025 (Tape 1) & April 15th 2025 (Tape 2)

Familiar But Less Interesting

For those that have played many of Don’t Nod’s prior games such as Life is Strange. You already know exactly what Lost Records Bloom & Rage is, a choose your own adventure book combine with a walking sim.

That’s right, in Lost Records Bloom & Rage, you walk around interacting with different items while talking to other characters and making dialogue choices. I like these kinds of games, as for me, narrative will always be most important.

To its credit, Lost Records Bloom & Rage does try something different with its camera recording and editing mechanics. Using these mechanics is pretty simple, the game will show you things to record. These can range from wildlife to graffiti and more. The game will show you is recordable when using your device by displaying a white border around the edges. A quick press of the right bumper will then start recording, which stops automatically after several seconds. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can manually stop by pressing the right bumper again. This will work at any time after the recording progress circle turns pink.

Once you collect a certain number of clips from any given location or category. You can then edit these clips together to create a memoir video.

Unfortunately, after the first couple of videos, you create this becomes pretty repetitive and boring. The editing and recording mechanics don’t have the level of depth required to remain interesting after a few hours of play. You will use the camera for other things occasionally, for example, it acts as a flashlight of sorts in dark areas.

What About Lost Records Bloom & Rage’s Story?

While I appreciate Lost Records Bloom & Rage for trying something different with mechanics, even when it didn’t ultimately click with me. The same can not be said for the games’ story and no that is not a good thing.

Lost Records Bloom & Rage sees you play as Swann Holloway during two different periods of her life. Firstly, we have the present day, where the game starts with you in a car on the phone to your mom. It soon becomes clear that you have travelled to Velvet Cove with the intention of meeting old friends. At this point, you don’t know why, and the truth is that this mystery of why is the driving force behind much of the story. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good mystery, but considering this mystery is solved through hours of flashback sequences and conversations in a bar. It just isn’t exciting at any point for me, at least.

I did have some enjoyment with the 1995 flashback sections of the game but not really because of the main plot. I just enjoyed the interactions and dialogue between Swann and her three friends Autumn, Nora and Kat. Each of them reminded me of someone that I have been friends with and they have interactions that are relatable. We’ve all been teenagers once, and we know the kinds of things they get up to.

When it came down to it however, this comradery and relatability wasn’t enough to keep me engaged with the core plot. The mystery just never really grabbed me and the very slow pacing didn’t help either.

Lost Records Bloom & Rage is the first game of this style that I haven’t finished, and that is a real shame. Luckily, it’s not all bad!

Joyful Expression And Vibrant Sounds

One bright spot of Lost Records Bloom & Rage is the presentation. Firstly, the visuals are quite simply beautiful. A mix of highly detailed faces and environments, without striving for photo-realism makes the game feel unique compared to the majority of high production value games in 2025. Instead of this ultra realistic art direction, Lost Records Bloom & Rage aims for something more akin to a Pixar animated movie.

What makes the visuals stand out is the fact that they have retained a high level of detail, for example, being able to see even the smallest blemish on a character’s skin without needing to keep the art realistic. Something that I find many games struggle to do, often, these more expressionist art directions result in a loss of fine detail. That just isn’t true for Lost Records Bloom & Rage, so huge credit to Don’t Nod for that.

The games’ audio isn’t quite as impressive as the visuals, but it does play a vital role in the presentation. This is particularly true of the score created by Milk & Bone and Ruth Radelet. What they made was music full of curiosity and reflectivity, but when need a bit of danger sneaks in as well. Always seeming to perfectly reflect what was happening on screen.

There were several times where I found myself just sat listening to the music without progressing the game. For me, when this happens you know the score is good.

Smooth As Butter

A huge positive for Lost Records Bloom & Rage is the performance on PC. I was able to play at the games highest available settings in 4K with a consist 120fps. Unfortunately, if you aren’t a fan of upscaling this game does continue the industry’s recent trend of forcing the use of upscaling. So, I opted for DLSS set to Quality in my testing. Obviously, your experience will vary depending on your PC specifications and preferred upscaling method.

Here’s what I was running the game on: I9-14900KF, NVIDIA GTX 4090 (founders edition), 96GBs Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000mhz RAM.

You might ask what about bugs? Well, in truth, I can’t remember encountering even the smallest of issues. Lost Records Bloom & Rage seems to be very well optimised on PC.

A Forgettable Experience That You Might Enjoy

Lost Records Bloom & Rage is not a game I will be thinking about years after I played it, the same way I did with Life Is Strange. Despite a best-in-class presentation and top-notch technical performance. Lost Records Bloom & Rage falls utterly short in the area that matters most for this genre story. With an uninteresting mystery and even worse pacing, it’s hard to recommend the experience. There are many better options, even ones made by Don’t Nod themselves.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Lost Records Bloom & Rage was provided to us for review purposes by Don’t Nod. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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