Life is Strange: Reunion Review

Life is Strange: Reunion is the latest instalment in the Life is Strange series and the direct sequel to Double Exposure. After all the weird and confusing things that went down with Safi, Max’s timeline hopping, and its odd connection to the storm back in the original Life is Strange, Max’s tale continues roughly a year later, with her life being, well… strange.

The game begins with a recap sequence of everything that happened up until now: from Chloe’s death and Max discovering her rewind powers, to Safi’s death and Max discovering her timeline-hopping powers. After that, we actually see a different perspective: Chloe Price, alive and well, being part of a band, and yet having memories of a timeline in which she’s dead. She knows the only person who can tell her what’s going on is Max, but not only have they been estranged since before Double Exposure’s story, she keeps seeing Max pointing a gun at her in her visions. 

After that fun sequence, we’re back at Max’s perspective, and she just came back from a gallery showing in New York, away from the university she teaches at, Caledon. On her way back, she receives a text message from Moses, one of her friends from uni, telling her that the entire campus is on fire and she needs to stay away.

Naturally, instead of listening, our girl Maxine rushed to Caldeon to help as much as she could, but failed to save anyone, and witnessed Moses dying from a roof collapsing due to the fire. In her desperation, Max uses her powers to go back into a photo she took three days ago, right before her gallery showing trip. Unlike in the original title, jumping into a photo here lets her stay in the past indefinitely, as if it’s just very strong rewind. 

From then on, she tells Moses, the only person who knows about her powers other than Chloe, about the fire that went down three days in the future. Together, they decide to try to stop it, even if using Max’s powers to change something so big could be dangerous. Initially, I disliked that a series which was so focused on emotionality and trauma became about superpowers, but unlike in Double Exposure, Deck Nine has handled the combination between the two very well. 

As with the rest of the series, this experience has multiple endings, depending on the choices the player makes throughout. Out of the three main finales, I only liked two of them, as the third one isn’t what I would have wanted for Max and Chloe’s fate. Although it goes off the stupid premise of Double Exposure, which just destroyed the final choice made in the original title, a lot of the nonsensical parts it had have been fixed.

Now, although they brought Chloe back, the premise of their break-up is still stupid in my opinion. So even though at the end, Deck Nine fixed a lot of their mistakes, it still would have been better to just leave Max and Chloe’s story alone after the original game. That said, it’s not an unenjoyable experience at all, and it did make me cry once or twice — it’s just not as good as Life is Strange.

Bringing back rewind to the Life is Strange series was one of the best decisions Square Enix could have made, at least as far as I’m concerned. I absolutely loved the idea of making save-scumming an actual game mechanic that the original title had, and also its implications on the story and relationships Max made, which were missing to me in Double Exposure. 

But, you don’t only play as Max; some of the time, you also play from Chloe’s perspective. It’s not just super fun to see her again and influence her and Max’s relationship, but Deck Nine has also brought back the only real gameplay mechanic the series has ever had: Backtalk, where you need to select the right dialogue options within a time limit. 

The rest is just the usual choice-based gameplay where you don’t do much more than interact with things and choose dialogue options, but Life is Strange has always been about the story and not the gameplay. Even then, this entry probably has the most fun gameplay out of all the rest, so it’s a little more interesting as a videogame than the earlier titles, which were all basically interactive movies.

As for how Reunion looks, it’s the same as Double Exposure, which is worse than I initially thought. Since the latter only had new characters for most of it, nothing felt “off”, but now that Chloe’s back? Oof. I know she’s supposed to be an adult now, so of course she’ll look a little different, but she just looks like an entirely different person. Character designs overall suffer from Same Face Syndrome pretty badly, with me even confusing Chloe for Max once or twice, even though their hair is completely different.

My thoughts on the voice acting in this game are a little complicated: as always, Hannah Telle did an incredible job voicing our favourite nerdy photographer, and most supporting characters are fine as well, but I have one big issue: Chloe’s voice. Now, I have nothing against Rhianna DeVries — she’s an incredibly talented voice actor — but still, she’s not Chloe’s original voice, and Square Enix not asking Ashly Burch, the original actor for Chloe, to voice her was definitely a mistake.

As for the music and sound effects: these are as amazing as I’ve come to expect from the series, although still not as good as the original Life is Strange. I absolutely loved hearing the rewind sfx again, and unlike Double Exposure, I might actually put some of the music on my playlist.

Overall, then, Life is Strange: Reunion is a huge improvement over the last instalment in the series, Double Exposure, but it’s still nowhere near as good as the original title. A lot of the nonsensical parts about the narrative were fixed, and once again, Max and Chloe have a chance to be together forever.