The most aggravating thing about this game for me was how deeply excited I was to play it because of how heavily interested I was in the concept, and how much it disappointed me in every single way imaginable. The combat is a snoozefest, the voice-acting turned me off immediately, the character writing is so unbelievably mediocre... Going in, I fully expected the branching character storylines to intertwine, so the fact that they're literally stand alone plot lines with nothing to do with one another irritated me so much, and they're not even particularly good plot lines at that. You essentially have a group of people in a party together with utterly nothing to do with one another or anything bringing them together. It's like you got on a train minding your own business, and suddenly you and the three other random ass people there are now part of an adventuring party, but you quite literally /never/ speak to one another or form any friendships at all, and you have nothing that holds you together whatsoever. You would expect a decent party to be a given in just about any JRPG, but this game is a complete failure from step 1. I couldn't recommend it to anyone in good faith, especially not when my complaints about it are so endless. I usually don't abandon games without seeing them through to the end, but this game irked me so much in every way conceivable that I really couldn't justify continuing to waste my time on it. It's possibly the most nothing game I've ever played. I truly wish I'd never spent the money on it.

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.

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!

Easily a contender for my absolute favorite game in the franchise. I group both games in this together, because the entirety of the first game is very obviously pure set-up for the brilliance of the second game, and I feel it's a bit unfair to separate the two. Nonetheless, the first game can definitely sometimes feel like a slog to get through, which is quite literally the only reason why I don't give this game a full 5 stars. However, the second game ALONE is SO fucking GOOD that it singlehandedly carries the complete overwhelming adoration I have for DGS. Still, though I completely understand why it felt this way (like I said, completely set-up for the second game), I wish the first game was more interesting and didn't bore me out of my mind so many times, because it nearly set me off from completing the entire series quite a few times. I'm glad I persevered through instead of shelving it because the second game was everything I could ever want in an AA game, but I think the first game could've been improved to feel a lot less stale and terribly slow to get through. From what I've seen, I feel like it prevents a lot of people from getting through the entire series and realizing how amazing it is, which is why I wish it was better and more engaging. It obviously was never going to be as good as the second game since that's where all the real action and pay-off is, but it still could've been a /better/ set-up game, yknow what I mean? Regardless, an utterly phenomenal staple in the AA franchise, and a must-play for anyone with interest in AA. I'll love it with my entire heart forever.

Honestly IMO the worst of the main AC games? The fact that this game was released during a pandemic was honestly its saving grace, because I don’t think I would’ve sunk NEARLY as many hours into this game as I did if I hadn’t been locked inside with nothing to do for months. So many basic features of the other games are totally missing from this game. Some of the new stuff is cool, like all the features centered around designing your island, but after a few months the charming newness of that grew old for me. The villagers are also TERRIBLY one-note and stale in this game, and I’ve never yearned for a return to the GameCube’s take on villager writing so badly. This game was amazing for the first few months, but I completely lost the desire to keep playing it after a short time (compared to how many years I spent playing the past games) had gone by, and I’ve never picked it up again since. Maybe I’ve just grown a bit too old for the series, but AC is something I’ll never let go of no matter how old I get, and I think that I could’ve enjoyed this game for a lot longer of a period of time as I did for all the other games if there had been a lot of improvements made to at least make it on par with some of the past works.

Objectively the best in the series, even if it isn’t my personal favorite. I think I was slowly growing out of my insane obsession with AC and moving on to a wider variety of games by the time this came out (and so were my best friends who I always played AC with at the time), so it wasn’t a game I sunk as many hours into compared to WW and CF. Nonetheless, I still played it A LOT, and this game still has so much to it that I respect and love. The island + swimming + the games + pretty much every other new addition I’m forgetting about off the top of my head were such insanely cool features that kept me entertained for a very long time. A lot of improvements from the past games also make this game such a joy. If I were to start playing any AC game again, this would probably be my go-to pick, simply because of how polished it is amongst all of the games.

Probably a terribly unpopular opinion, but this one was actually my favorite as a kid? I think it’s because I played it SO, SO much with my best friends compared to any of the other games (save WW) that I will forever be deeply fond of it. Like sure it’s not at all that impressive compared to what we have now but the addition of the city had me LOSING MY MINDDD when I was a kid, I would go to the city with my best friends every single day to fuck around. It’s admittedly not terribly different or much of an improvement from WW in most other respects, but I loved WW with a fevered passion, so that wasn’t at all a bad thing to me. Somehow I used to always get into situations where I didn’t save my game in this one, so this was the game that REALLY made me terrified of Resetti to the point of having nightmares as a kid LMFAO. The pretending to delete your save and cutting to the black screen prank with him made me cry as a kid it was objectively hilarious looking back. Again, I guess it’s not that impressive of a game in the series now, but to me it was everything as a kid and with how I played it religiously every single day for YEARS it’s easily the most hours I’ve sunk into any game ever (again, save maybe WW).

This game was the entire reason why I got a DS, and it was my favorite game in the entire world for SO many years. Though I’m sure I would find it a lot more boring now, I could never get enough of playing this game. I was REALLY young when I first got it, so I honestly credit it so much for raising me and teaching me. My mom used to teach me how to read more using this game LMFAO. It’s not the best in the series but for all that it gave me as a kid it will forever be one of my most treasured games EVER, even if it’s for the nostalgia. The memories I have of playing this game with my cousins pushing them into pitfalls and running around smacking the shit out of them with nets cant ever be forgotten… Among other foundational moments of my life like learning what attachment and abandonment was as I bawled my eyes out when I hopped on one day and found out my favorite villager EVER (Goldie) moved away and reset my game a billion times trying to get her back (I think I might’ve succeeded eventually) so yknow. Memories <3

For some reason this game has such a special spot in my heart and I cant really properly explain why. I used to play this game with my half sister when I was a kid, which was really funny because I was utterly terrified by the game to the point of having nightmares about it, which was really amusing to my sister. Like, I couldn’t even play it alone without her because I was so scared shitless by it LMFAO. The ambiance of this game just left so much of an impact on me as a kid that I still think about to this day, it was the first thing I ever played that was relatively dark and eerie, even if it was just a silly game about a green plumber in a fucking haunted mansion, that was BIG for me as a kid LMFAO. Of course it’s been a very long time so I don’t remember much about it in detail anymore, but someday I’d like to replay this for the nostalgia.