This is a spoiler free review. All images captured are from the first quarter of the game.
Life is Strange: Reunion is a game I doubt many players of the original releases ever expected to happen. Nine years after their stories were satisfactorily concluded; I count myself among the majority who welcomed the return of Max and Chloe.
The lateness of this review, as Life is Strange: Reunion released back in March 2026, is because as it presented a definitive continuation as well as a conclusive ending to Max and Chloe’s story, in preparation I replayed their old games before jumping into this one. While a lot of the world building and updates on Max’s story are outlined in Life is Strange: Double Exposure, a handy ‘the story so far’ is shown upon starting Reunion, so playing the last game is advisable but not mandatory. Reunion does give you the opportunity to tell it what choices you made in the previous games, so it was fortunate I had replayed them recently.
The first thing I need to explain about Reunion is it is no longer episodic, and runs as one continuous narrative from beginning to end, pausing only to switch between main characters as the story requires. While I wasn’t a fan of this change at first, as I liked seeing how my choices aligned with other players at the close of each chapter, this does make a return at the conclusion of the game. I rolled credits after eight hours, after exploring all environments as much as possible, as well as exhausting all offered dialogue options. This makes Reunion the shortest in the series, aside from the deliberately compact Before the Storm.
Life is Strange: Reunion features the best dialogue the series has ever seen, with a particular nod to Chloe’s from the original games. Chloe thinking out loud “haven’t talked like this in years” when recollecting how she dealt with Nathan Prescott in the first game stood out for how much it made my eyes roll during my series replay this year (“you got hella cash“). Hearing Chloe and Max interact as grown adults with careers contained enough soul that it felt like their teenage counterparts were still with them, just subdued by years of having to fend for themselves away from parents and ‘step-douches’ who tried their best to take care of them.
Dialogue isn’t the only aspect which has been built on as there has also been clear improvements made to the lighting and graphical quality. I hugely appreciate now how you can back out of Max inspecting an item and continue exploring a room without her thoughts cutting off with it; a frequent bugbear of mine when trying to maximise inner commentary on her surroundings to glean more information for the story.
Max continues to be a great, genuine and empathetic character. With this now being her third game, it’s a credit to her writing that it remains satisfying playing as her and following her development, which in Reunion’s case begins with a much darker tone and mystery to solve. Max’s evolution even from Double Exposure to Reunion is a joy to see, having been promoted from artist-in-residence to full-time photography professor. Her enthusiasm for both her passion and teaching offers a satisfying close to what the rest of her professional life could be.
Max’s time rewind ability makes a welcome return here, replacing her alternate timeline switching power from Double Exposure, which I confess I never really got to grips with. Where the rewind now differs from the first Life is Strange is instead of simply using it to see how each choice will play out in the moments after making them, here deeper and more direct dialogue options are unlocked. These assist the plot in Reunion by forcing some characters into more direct or heated confrontations which previous games would have had to spend more time organically building towards.
The only time I felt the game tripped over and contradicted itself was during a mid-game conversation between Max and one of her students. When commenting on the composition of the student’s photograph, they said that Max had incorrectly grasped the intended construction of their photo. However, by rewinding time and and just telling the student what they wanted to hear, despite it not assisting the plot, I felt like Max was undermining her own subject, something I’d believed she would never intentionally do.
As always seems to be the case in branching stories such as these, by the time the game ends and I can compare the ending I received with the other possibilities, I always seem to have wound up with the worst one. There is a late game choice where Max has to choose from a line-up of potential suspects, each of whom has presented themselves with plausible deniability of the crime in question. My final choice, that I wrestled with for several minutes, eventually amounted to cheap guesswork which soured the closing scenes of the game for me, and not just because my guess was wrong.
The first half of the story brought back most of the supporting cast from Double Exposure, introducing new depth and dimensions to their characters I really appreciated. Unfortunately by the second half, whether through my actions or not, they had all been sidelined again and most didn’t even appear for the rest of the game. This aggravated me when the credits rolled as, despite trying to experience all the game had, I was told in the ending stats screen I’d missed a considerable chunk of one character’s story, leaving a significant branch of the overriding plot completely unresolved. The fact this happened despite my efforts to not miss anything indicates poor story construction, especially as Max at one point states ‘I wonder what’s happening over there’, as if I’d chosen to ignore it.
While my brief time reconnecting with Max and Chloe was fun while it lasted, it didn’t manage to hit the same emotional and heart-warming notes that the original games did. I can recommend Reunion exclusively to fans of the series who are already invested in our protagonists stories, but would preface that it’s important not to expect a return of the old magic. I score Life is Strange: Reunion
6 / 10
Game code provided by publisher.
Written, edited and images captured by Alexx.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5 Pro.
How I scored previous Life is Strange games.
- Life is Strange – 9 / 10
- Life is Strange – Before the Storm – 10 / 10
- Life is Strange 2 – 7 / 10
- Life is Strange: True Colours – 8 / 10
- Life is Strange: Double Exposure – 6 / 10