It’s crazy that it has already been eleven years since the debut of the Life is Strange series, and we were taken into the little Pacific Northwest town of Arcadia Bay to meet the dynamic duo of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. These two characters were the reason why so many fell in love with the series, myself included, and is what made that first game so special. They both have starred in their own games since then, but haven’t shared a game post the first game (the prequel bonus episode of Life is Strange: Before the Storm notwithstanding). Now, all these years later, the two them finally reunite in the newest entry in the series Life is Strange: Reunion. With this being touted as the finale for the duo, let’s rewind back into the lives of Max and Chloe to see how the aptly titular reunion is handled.
Life is Strange: Reunion is a direct follow up to the last entry in the the series Life is Strange: Double Exposure. Set months after the conclusion of that game, Max is now a full blown teacher at Caledon University and semi famous photographer. The game starts with her returning from a gallery to find the university in flames with her students and friends dying because of it. Thus, Max takes the onus upon herself to use her time rewinding powers to jump back in time to stop the fire from happening and save her home once again.
Due to her timeline merging shenanigans in the last game, Max unwittingly draws Chloe back into the fold as well. Chloe is having strange nightmare like visions of being both alive and dead, and wants to see Max to try to figure out why it is happening to her. After years apart both in game and real time, the moment these two characters are on screen together again, I got chills as all the emotions from their relationship came flooding back. Deck Nine only had the aforementioned bonus episode of Before the Storm working with these characters together, but they nail and evolve the dynamic original developer Don’t Nod had for these two near flawlessly. While the mystery of stopping the fire is the impetus of the story, the rekindling of the relationship between Max and Chloe becomes the main focus of the game. The game makes you want to see these two characters happy together and all the cute moments they have together throughout the game are really special.
On the gameplay side, this time around you play as both Max and Chloe throughout the game with constant switching of who you control depending on the scene. There’s no timeline hopping in this game, so Max is back to soling using her rewind powers for the first time since the first game. Chloe, on the other hand, lacks superpowers, but her backtalking mechanic from Before the Storm returns. However, this is only used a few times throughout the game and can even be avoided altogether as some instances are completely optional. There could have been more or at least implemented into the the main conversations so Chloe’s portions of the game felt like they had more to do gameplay wise.
Going into Life is Strange: Reunion one of the biggest concerns and disappointments from fans was that Ashly Burch was not reprising her role as Chloe this time around. Instead, Rhianna DeVries, who voiced a younger Chloe in Before the Storm due the voice actor strike at the time, returns here. Well fans, don’t worry as she nails an older version of Chloe in this game, and it took about one scene of Chloe in the game to get used to Chloe’s voice and I never thought about it again.
While that concern was eased rather quickly, Life is Strange: Reunion does have it fair share of other issues. The biggest of which being on the technical side. Despite reusing so many assets and locations from the last game, there were a handful of occasions of pop in and things not loading correctly. There were even a couple of times where a scene started and the entire game became washed out completely with both cutscenes and gameplay basically having like a white filter on them where I had to completely restart my stem to get rid of each time it happened. This game also completely abandons the episodic format the franchise is known for. While the previous two entries have been full games, they were still split into episodic chapters. In Reunion, that’s not the case as you play through it as you would any other story based game with no definitive breaks. This really felt awkward when you have to wait until the very end of the game to see the choices everyone had made.
Outside of Max and Chloe, the other characters in the game are of little note. You notice this almost immediately as one early scene has Max teaching a class with a small group of characters with one just being called “Student 3.” Then, with this being a direct follow up from the last game, many of the characters that had major roles there have been reduced to minor characters now. The biggest being Amanda who was a nice addition as a close confidant for Max in her first appearance, but now feels like an afterthought here. One character even gets a wildly bizarre and unearned conclusion here despite information you learn about them throughout the game. Then there’s Safi. With how the last game handled her, she already gave off unlikable vibes, but this time around she feels insufferable and her return makes little sense with how she departed after Double Exposure’s conclusion. My biggest gripe, much like the last game, is the lack of music being a big part of the game. Before, music increased the emotional resonance of scenes, but I don’t remember anything memorable about the score this time around.
Life is Strange: Reunion completely knocks the titular reunion of Max and Chloe out of the park. You love seeing the characters back together for the first time in ages. However, the overall story may be the weakest of the entire franchise. Plus, the technical issues really plagued the game and weren’t there in the last game that used basically all the same things. While the game nails the finale to Max and Chole and gives them a heartfelt farewell, the game itself could’ve landed better.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5