A father, who would give his child a string of prayer beads, couldn’t possibly be a bad person. Right?
This visual novel has been sitting in my library since around 2024. I genuinely waited for an official English translation from the developers, but we never got one. As of writing this review, there still isn't a proper English translation or patch. Because of that, I ended up using a DeepL OCR Translator to read through it. Considering Chinese is one of the hardest languages to translate, the tool did a surprisingly great job, handling roughly 99.9% of the text with decent contextual understanding. But I'm not here to review a translation tool, let's talk about the game itself.
Lost and Found ~ The Awaited Recollection is a rather peculiar visual novel. It has strong emotional moments that can keep you on the edge of your seat, but in many instances, it feels heavily overdone. Judging by the Mixed Steam reviews (which are currently 100% in Chinese) players are split into two: those who enjoyed the game's emotional rollercoaster, and those who didn't and ended up questioning the entire game's universe.
You play as Xiao Jie (晓桀), a human in his 20s who has managed to become a bestselling writer. One day, he goes to meet someone in a park, and just as suddenly as the story begins, he is reunited with his tiger beastfolk father, Cao Wang Sheng (曹枉生), after 20 years. Overwhelmed by a sudden burst of emotion, Xiao runs away in tears, only to be hit by a car. Wang Sheng immediately comes to his aid and takes care of him while he recovers. During Wang Sheng's stay, we play as Xiao Jie trying to figure out what really happened 20 years ago and what led to his current life. This core theme of balancing what was once lost and what is once found, is laid out in just the first 10 minutes.
Although the premise seems promising enough, the execution feels off-putting. Despite encountering multiple characters, we are rarely given adequate context about them or the world itself. To make matters worse, the melodramatic and overly forceful emotional torture starts to take over, which is where the novel suffers the most. Our protagonist apparently survived a soul-crushing, traumatic childhood to get where he is today. Making Xiao Jie feel almost unnaturally unbreakable human being, yet he struggles to answer basic, everyday questions.
The plot twists and conflicts feel so out of touch that you can't help but wonder what's worse that could possibly happen next. Amidst all these hardships, the worldbuilding narration suffers the most, and even Wang Sheng's personality fails to make sense. Proper context explaining how this world came to be, or where the beastfolk originated from, would have helped tremendously considering you're going to visit a zoo full of animals... The entire setting is riddled with unanswered questions. Same goes to narrating, which ironically should be at the first glance obvious, whose story is told. But it really isn't and sometimes you find yourself confused, who's now in charge of the story.
Players also complained that the CGs were too generic and criticized the lack of a traditional visual novel CG gallery. Personally, that wasn't a dealbreaker for me. The soundtrack was decent, though not always spot-on. However, the writing felt incredibly jarring during major confrontations. You often wouldn't even realize something bad was happening unless you were reading heavily between the lines. Dropping major narrative reveal mid-game isn't anything new, but dropping critical context mid-sentence is easily the wildest way to execute a plot twist. The very next sentence returns to normal, leaving you wondering where that information even came from and why nobody is addressing it.
Adding to the confusion, the novel features three endings. Once you finish reading on one ending, you can skip previously read dialogue to focus on different choices. I got "END 3" on my first playthrough, which is apparently the "best" ending. Ironically, the worst ending was the only one that made logical sense to me. Call me ignorant, but I felt zero satisfaction upon finishing this game. I was simply left thinking: "That's it?" while reminiscing only about the lost time I spent reading it.
In short: The art style is decent, but the storytelling and worldbuilding stumble through most of the game. It delivers about 10% high highs, but 90% low lows. I understand what the creators were trying to achieve, but it relies so heavily on clichéd, forced melodrama that if Xiao Jie's life events happened to a real person, I doubt they'd survive it. I saw the vision and understood what the story was trying to say, only for it all to vanish in a second due to an unexplainable plot point pulled out of nowhere. I was rooting for a change of pace only to be turned out not the way I anticipated.
