Note: The Following review contains spoilers for Life is Strange: True Colors and other Life is Strange games.

Life is Strange: True Colors is a standalone video game set in the Life is Strange universe. I got this and its sequel for free on Humble via a friend of mine. Life is Strange 2 was pretty good and I found myself favoring its sequel more than the first one. While the sequel had its problems, I did enjoyed the dynamic between Sean and Daniel. Not as memorable as Max and Chloe. But they were very enjoyable leads.

If were to describe Alex Chen is. She’s just simply ok but nothing too bland or generic. She comes across as pretty much your average girl with emotional problems. Like the previous games, where Max has the power to rewind time and Daniel the ability to levitate objects. Alex has the power to read people’s thoughts and emotions. Represented by different colors. Red represents anger, blue represents sadness, purple represents fear and yellow represents joy. By pressing the left trigger, you can enable this via a circle around the said person and at some point, even unlock extra dialogue options. You can even trigger this option to unlock flashbacks but that’s mostly for achievements and for those who wanna go on a completionist run. Her powers don’t seem to have a lot of impact on how you play aside from a few moments that utilize this power.

The key problem is that her power is not used quite a lot in this game. Max’s power for example is utilized quite a lot for events and to change your choice if you feel like it was the wrong decision. Not only that, in scripted sections of the game it really requires you to use it more for events like saving Chloe from a train and sneaking in the school to steal money for disabled kids (No I’m not fucking kidding) Or the most impactful choice is saving Kate Marsh from suicide. Where you couldn’t use your powers at all and had to use your knowledge of the bible to rescue her. By saying her favorite passage, it rescued her and she lives making it one of the most satisfying things to ever pull of in a video game. Life Is Strange is not a masterpiece as it does suffer from some flaws like questionable writing decisions and its divisive finale. I still had a good time overall.

True Colors however feels a bit more of the safe route. As in, it’s not as intense or as shocking as the previous games. No twist and turns, no relationships being broken or anything. As a standalone game, it’s not half bad but as a Life is Strange game. It falls really flat.
True Colors to be best described as; it’s a Telltale Game where they decided to make a Life is Strange game but never utilize why the games were enjoyable. In other words. Your choices and decisions you make don’t have a lot of strong impact on how people view you, especially at the end.
I didn’t know what I did right for my choices for the endgame. I was in the small minority for this one which makes me think. Why weren’t there any repercussions and why wasn’t there any depth or pacing to make it so? It felt like a quick buck for this game and it certainly shows. It doesn’t detract I still had a good time with this game.

My experience with the first episode felt a little underwhelming at first but then progressively got better with EP2, 3 and 4. However EP5 is where it went reaaaaaaally downhill fast. I couldn’t find a strong connection with these characters as your relationships with them are pretty paper-thin. Gabe felt like he needed more screen time and he doesn’t appear later until the last episode as a figment of Alex’s imagination. We see him, talk to him for a bit and then he dies after trying to save Ethan. EP1 gives us a bit of taste of the town of Haven Spring and some of its residents. I wished that we get to see more of them. Like the ice cream couple who runs a business and a man with anger problems. We do help some fat guy who in the record store is coping with his lost dog. But he seems like one of the only residents we help with compared to a few. I didn’t know there were other events like that but I did wished we got to do more with these people and learn their stories for a much more interesting outcome.
The entire plot involves Gabe, your brother who while trying to save Ethan after getting lost in the woods for his fantasy adventures. Gets killed by an accident which leads to the story. EP2 is where we get to his funeral and followed by more conflict. Center of the attention is a man named Mac who back in EP1. I winded up whooping his ass because he was accusing of my brother of having an affair with his GF and then getting his GF to break up with him after lying his ass off. I disliked him at first as he seemed kind of a scuzzball. Not when we got to EP2 when I felt sorry for him because everybody blamed him for Gabe’s death despite having scrutiny to him. It felt one-sided to me and it seemed everybody was jumping to conclusions. Later on, we see his side of the story and it seemed like everybody was at fault. I kept blaming this on Ryan considering that he was the one who cut the rope and lead to his death (Plus isn’t that like manslaughter?). Which to me made me think there should’ve been a trial to either accuse Ryan or Mac in this which leads to more conflicting feelings from the characters. Like Ryan’s father Jed having neutral or resentful feelings for me or Mac winds up being ostracized by the entire town. This entire thing did paid off at the end with a nice little emotional send off but it didn’t really have a lot of strong impact as a whole. I might be thinking too deeply about this.

We never see Mac or his GF Riley ever again in this story which made me think to what’s even the point? EP3 is my favorite, mostly because it’s just a LARP and its mimicking of RPGs is very charming at best. I loved the music that played in the background whenever I got into combat and the fun they had. I really loved the final boss fight which turns into a fantasy setting with Jed in full costume looking something akin to a Warcraft character. I had fun finding scrolls, coins and interacting with the people in character and reading their happy thoughts. It was a pleasant one at best.
After the LARP we get to the center again. Like with Mac, this time with Ethan. The little boy who starts to feel a sense of guilt. He feels like he got Gabe killed. I felt sympathetic for him because he’s just a small child and he wouldn’t ever think it would be his fault.
Then were cut to Charolotte. His mother who starts to feel a sense of hatred for her son because of him getting him killed. She was also apparently a love interest for him but I didn’t really pay much attention for me to care. I had the option to either use her emotions or just leave it be. So, I let it be, I didn’t know if this affected anything but I let it slide.

There are other events I should also bring up like Elanor having dementia and some other events but they felt like a foot note.

I’d say EP4 is where we get to the real meat of it. It begins with a party and other shenanigans. Like with the first Life is Strange. I decided to get a rose and I gave it to Steph. This winds up building a weird relationship that feels like it could’ve had more buildup. But fuck it, lesbians (Though Alex is bisexual) Yes, I was one of “those” guys who decided to kiss Chloe which is dangerous because it’s a toxic barrel.
I’m just going to skim through EP4 and EP5 because I’m in a rush. So, we get interrogated after stealing a USB and we get to choose to either toy with Piker’s emotions or sign a paper to give up. But it felt regardless of what you do you still get the outcome of the end. Jed tells us to meet up somewhere and it turns out he was in cahoots with the company and he shoots us under a mining well.

I will give it this though. The plot twist was pretty shocking to me and I was stunned by it. But EP5 is where it went really downhill. We’re given flashbacks of Alex’s past and after finding a piece of jewelry that belonged to her father. We used it for evidence that Jed is solely responsible for not only Gabe’s death but some other incident where got her father killed. Everyone was on my side shockingly and what made it even more shocking is that I was in the small minority for this one. I didn’t know if I made the right choices for them to be on my side but it was a surprise for me.
After that, Jed is in jail and the company is facing some lawsuits. Followed by a choice to either stay in Haven Springs or go out on an adventure. I chose to stay.
Not much happens aside from some excellent music. True Colors is decent as a standalone game but as a Life is Strange game it falls flat. I recommend this game overall if you want more Life is Strange. Its decent for what it is and I had a good time.