Life is Strange: Reunion review-in-progress: "Bogged down in past drama, I'm struggling to revel in the joy of Chloe and rewind's return"

Life is Strange: Reunion pitches itself as the "finale" of Max and Chloe's saga, which feels like an odd concept considering the two only starred in one single game, the first Life is Strange back in 2015. Only about 4 hours into this narrative adventure, I can almost hear the game creaking and bending to fit that term, assuring me that, no, really, all the events of Life is Strange, its prequel, and legacy sequel Double Exposure have all been leading to this, we swear. But, in practice, Reunion is desperately struggling to hold it all together, and it'll be a miracle if this sticks the landing, feeling more like a hasty epilogue coda than a thrilling finale in its own right.

After a genre mandatory dream sequence, Life is Strange: Reunion at least spares no time getting stuck into its central mystery. Picking up nine months after Life is Strange: Double Exposure, photography student turned photography instructor Max Caufield returns from a gallery showcase to Caledon University, where the last game was also set. She's greeted by a horrific fire with arson tools nearby making it clear it's deliberate, witnessing trapped students in a chained-up building suffocate to death and her friends tumble into flames before being caught in an explosion herself. Only just managing to use her time superpowers to travel back into a selfie she took before her trip, she's got two days to unravel why the fire started and put a stop to it. Also, the consequences of the first game's time storm seem to be catching up to both her and Chloe.

Class of '15

Yep, there's essentially two ticking clocks going on at once – it's a shame 'Double Exposure' was already taken as a name. Still, while the arson attack is a compelling reason for Max to time travel her way through two days of sleuthing, I'm worried the addition of the looming consequences from the first game may risk diluting a solid hook in the name of ensuring the original game still has relevance.

Life is Strange: Reunion occupies an odd space where it both feels like an immediate sequel to 2024's Life is Strange: Double Exposure, and the original game at the same time, all while chopping, changing, and retconning a bunch of set-up. It's great to see mouthy punk Chloe Price return, and as a playable character no less. But, at least this early into the game (and already revealed pre-release, so I don't consider this a spoiler), she's not quite the Chloe we knew from previous games.

In the first Life is Strange, Max's visions of an oncoming time storm come to pass, and she has the choice to either undo saving Chloe's life at the beginning of the game in order to save her hometown Arcadia Bay, or for the two to escape and leave it all behind. Like the timeline merging at the end of Double Exposure (which had a timeline-hopping central mechanic), Chloe has become an amalgam where both Life is Strange endings came to pass. The choice I made still carries over, confusing Max either way – so there's a chance this becomes an interesting plot point. I'm intrigued to find out more, even if the non-nostalgia-tinged arson attack is the more interesting of the two threads.

Likewise, the ending scene of Double Exposure where Max revealed to a core team of allies that she has powers in order to stand up to shapeshifting frenemy Safi's quest to assemble more power users? Well, everyone just forgot about that off-screen. Don't worry about it. Moments when Max battled through another time storm at the end of Double Exposure are also revealed, early on, to have just happened completely differently to how we saw them in order to explain the set-up to Reunion.

Considering I thought Double Exposure was a really promising adventure that completely dropped the ball in its last couple of episodes, some of this is necessary to get back on track. But, it feels exhausting to wade through what feels like a bunch of errata corrections. Life is Strange: Reunion only asks you for five decisions you've made across the series as well – two from the first game, and three from Double Exposure (there's no save transfer to read them automatically) – meaning a few threads from the last game feel oddly flattened here.

Which isn't to say I've not been enjoying my time with Life is Strange: Reunion at all. I've long been one of the series' fans that's craved the return of the original game's rewind powers, and Reunion finally does so – immediately allowing Max Caufield to once again hold down L2 to unspool an in-universe five minutes of time.

Have to solve a puzzle under pressure? Rather than merely fail and reload, Max herself can reset the table, keeping certain tools in hand – an early Reunion puzzle has her cutting demolition charges in a specific order to avoid, well, exploding. Even better, the rewind allows you to take back conversations with other characters while retaining knowledge you get from them. Reveal information you know in order to get another character to talk? You can delete ever having that chat but still keep the secrets they spilled. Regret a big decision? You're free to run it back both ways to assure yourself of your choice or, more often, agonize over exactly how to play it.

Rewind remains a genius mechanic for a choice-based narrative game, inverting the time pressure others in the genre play with to instead coat decisions in analysis paralysis juice. It can also be used to unlock puzzle solution dialogue options you can use to bamboozle characters, such as pretending to guess someone's university major in order to fail and have them correct you, then twist time back in order to 'guess' it correctly. The morality of doing this, of course, is up to you to decide – but with lives at stake, who will begrudge the odd party trick to get your way?

The Price is right

Life is Strange: Reunion is able to have its rewind cake and eat it, too, thanks to also playing as the non-superpowered Chloe. This is technically the first game in the series to have two playable characters (Life is Strange creator Don't Nod did use the idea in the very similar Tell Me Why, after they left the series behind). Chloe's lack of powers is almost liberating. Her prickly personality firmly established, it's refreshing to have her brusque dialogue options compared to Max's people-pleaser tendencies. Telling annoying guys at the bar to 'eff off just hits.

Chloe's backtalk 'ability' also returns, a basic-if-somewhat-charming dialogue mini-game that has her scoring points in a verbal argument to get her way. So far, these aren't quite as good as they were in Life is Strange: Before the Storm, which was centered around scoring insulting dunks to outwit opponents. Reunion, instead, has only so far challenged me to have Chloe test her trivia about, for instance, Caledon University's mascot, or to prove she's a member of a certain forum. Less backtalk and more trivia-talk, I'm hoping this moves away from being Ace Attorney-lite back into being more insult-driven.

Each environment I've explored so far has also felt denser with interactables than Double Exposure, and it's nice to return to this nosy hallmark of the series. While some areas of Caledon University return, the stormy conclusion of the previous game means repairs have pushed the action into new zones on campus, which is nice to see. Though, these wide spaces have so far still lacked the personal touch of the series' best snooping zones. I also have to mention some consistent lighting issues that have required me to restart the game to fix.

It's also nice to see Max lean into her instructor role with interactions with Caledon's students, even teaching a short class at one point. At times, it was easy to forget she was faculty in Double Exposure. Butting heads with the university's new comically anti-liberal-arts dean is also frequently chuckle worthy. While I'm not completely sold on Reunion's overall story, dialogue exchanges can still be a lot of fun, riding the iconic Life is Strange line between cringe, humor, and being emotionally raw.

Life is Strange: Reunion is also the first game in the series to seemingly completely ditch the episodic structure. The first game released periodically, but even later all-at-once approaches retained that storytelling approach. So far, this has all been one unbroken adventure, though as the narrative moves you between Max and Chloe you have some obvious jumping off points to go and have a nap if you want.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new structure yet, but it's pleasantly surprising to meet with this fresh approach in an otherwise nostalgia-heavy game. So far, it means the story doesn't need to keep having shocking end-of-episode stingers, and can focus on just telling the story it has to tell, which I'm hoping will make for a more focused adventure. It definitely feels like Double Exposure was spread thin, after all, so this could be for the best.

The problem so far is that story, though. Remember when Life is Strange used to be about believable character drama supplemented by strange superpowers in a magical realist way? What if, instead, it was all about superpowers and merely supplemented by a touch of character drama? Life is Strange: Reunion's promising premise had me excited for the first couple of hours, but it's currently given way to exhaustion as it becomes increasingly bogged down in explaining how Max's time powers work, and the looming consequences of changing the past after the first game's time storm. Four hours in, Life is Strange: Reunion is obsessed with dissecting these powers and the consequences of using them, and I was already tired with Double Exposure's own spotty approach to this.

Becoming laser focused on its own lore, there's a real danger that Life is Strange: Reunion is just the series eating its own tail, potential character drama falling by the wayside in favor of picking apart the past. Forget rewind, where's the fast-forward? It's about time Life is Strange could look into the future again, and I'm maybe beginning to realize why Life is Strange 2 and Life is Strange: True Colors were wise to leave Arcadia Bay in the rear-view mirror. There's time for Life is Strange: Reunion to win me back, but I'm getting anxious with each turn of this class yearbook page.

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