I've been playing Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, and it's really making me question one particular thing about "choices matter" games

For those who don't know, Lost Records is a game released last year by Don't Nod, the company most well-known for creating Life is Strange. As with that game, Lost Records is what I like to think of as a "lite adventure game", sort of sitting in this vague area in between the adventure games of old, walking simulators, and visual novels. It also features an artistically-minded LGBT teenage girl as its main protagonist (in this case, cinematography, not photography is her obsession), and also combines "slice of life" elements with supernatural mysteries.

One of the big things that sets this game apart from Life is Strange is that Don't Nod went *much* more heavily into the "choices matter" aspect that was also a thing in the former game. There are *multiple hundreds* of choices in Lost Records. Many of these basically just add points to a relationship meter or change some cosmetic thing about the game. But those relationship meters really matter to the story, and some individual choices are massively consequential to the way the story plays out, and it's often not that easy to tell how important a choice might be. Furthermore, it's very easy to completely miss the opportunity to make certain choices, just by not exploring enough, or accidentally doing something else during a key moment that prevents a conversation from triggering, or going too fast on completing your objectives, or some other reason for a conversation to just *not trigger* during your playthrough.

Despite all of that, the game is largely a linear story that covers much of the same ground on every playthrough. Big things change, especially the ending, but it's more like the same story with different flavors and outcomes than something truly, drastically different throughout each playthrough.

This... frustrates me. It feels like you'd have to play through the game several times (or more!) to really nail down what you need to do and what choices to make to be able to actually guide the story toward the sort of outcome you desire. *Or* play through with a walkthrough open. The first option is tedious; the latter breaks immersion. And that feels to me like it's counter to the main purpose of the game, which is clearly to tell a great story.

To simplify this a bit: I don't want to feel like a somewhat-vague choice I make in the first few hours is going to screw up my whole playthrough ten hours later. That doesn't feel like good gameplay *or* good storytelling. And I feel like this problem might be inherent to this sort of game, where it's one long linear story with consequential choices.

A contrast I keep thinking about is with Slay the Princess, which is also a game where your story choices are very consequential. But that game is not presented as one straightforward linear story. It is basically an anthology game, and no one playthrough takes very long. You can't "ruin" a playthrough in Slay the Princess. I mean, you can, but you can always go back and just do it again without much time cost. There are ways to do this and make it work, is my point.

My question is, is it inevitable to feel this way about a game with one longer story and so many choices that actually matter, or is it just a me thing, or is Lost Records just not doing a good job of handling this issue and there are ways to work around it that Don't Nod didn't use? What do you think?