I don't CARE if people hate this game I like it SO MUCH. My AA game of the life. Yes it has flaws and it's nowhere NEAR perfect, but as a whole it's such a fun and deeply ambitious work that I can't even be truly bothered by its problems, because I respect everything it tries to pull off so much. Honestly, I'll always personally prefer a game that's messy but fun a LOT more than a game that's written more cleanly but is also rather by the book, and AA4 clearly falls in the former category. The characters in this game are EVERYTHING to me and my favorite in the series, and I think this was the last game in mainline AA that I truly, TRULY adored. I could talk about it for hours (whenever I next replay it, I will make this review a lot more detailed. Trust.) I will forever wish it had gotten its own trilogy instead of getting shafted in favor of AA5-6 returning back to the same old with Phoenix and co, because I think that a more polished set of games centered around this cast could've improved it in people's minds. Plus, getting more with these characters at the forefront would've been the greatest joy of my life... but oh well. I'm nothing. It's fine. I'll continue to smile through the pain of what could have been.

I think if I had spent my hard-earned money to play this game instead of watching the 13 hour Youtube cutscene of it mostly on 2x speed I would've cried. Saved from the worst score imaginable because of the hilarity of sexy emo Junpei + the meme factor of how bad it is + birthing the idea of Team C Throuple in my mind. Other than that. The most nothing characters of all time (someone needs to go to hell for somehow butchering the Sigma and Phi character writing though this shouldn't have been a surprise after VLR Clover), the most poorly thought out gimmicks to base a game on ever, and also I had to sit through the podsex scene while on the train at 7 AM so I think someone should be drawn and quartered for that.

The most difficult game I've ever played, straight up. If you think Souls games are the peak of difficulty in gaming you've very obviously never played LLTQ. Eldritch beasts are absolutely nothing in comparison to trying to figure out how to get this princess to live to see her coronation. This damn game had me going mad as a kid trying to figure out what skills I needed to improve each week in order to not die, and it's choose-your-own-adventure design made it so much fun for me in spite of how frustrating it was. I have such a deep nostalgic attachment to this game that I can't really explain, I just adore it? Still, it has a ton of flaws that I would do anything to see improved. The concept alone is /brilliant/ to me and tons of fun at first, but I wish there was more variety so that repeat playthroughs attempting to beat the game don't feel like a complete dialogue-skipping slog to get through. Once you've beat it once, there's pretty much nothing that makes you feel like replaying again. A few good tweaks and adjustments to make it more entertaining upon replays would make this game a masterpiece to me.

Extremely hard game for me to rate. The highs are so unbelievably high, but I think people tend to gloss over how mediocre some parts of it are when they hail this as the best in the franchise. The Disney worlds in this game are so bland and uninspired compared to KH1 it almost feels like a joke. The beginning, climax, and ending are SO, SO strong in terms of their writing, but everything in-between is a slog to get through. Like I said, the parts that we all know are great are seriously phenomenal, and everything about playing through the ending portion of the game had me so crazy hyped I was losing my mind. Still, it's not enough for me to completely overlook how totally meh a lot of the in-between gameplay was due to how lifeless and filler-y the Disney worlds felt. KH1 managed to make them feel a lot more magical, while keeping them relevant enough to the story that it didn't have me constantly tapping my foot waiting for the story to get to the good part like it did in KH2. Still a really great game overall that I also love, but personally, it doesn't quite beat KH1 for me.

Such a solid trilogy all around, they'll never get old for me. It's been a while since I played, I kinda wanna replay and remember specifics to write a better and more detailed review for each game than the one I could give right now. I'll probably do that in the future! Anyways, in short, AA is such a master class in character writing, and this trilogy demonstrates that phenomenally. The stellar writing in these games ensures it'll stay in my heart as one of my favorite series for life. I'll never forget the thrill of experiencing the first game blind for the first time, and immediately rushing to play every other AA game I could get my hands on. Don't even have any jokes, I just genuinely love this franchise so much!