Everyone always rags on this one and I really don't know why... probably just nostalgia for older entries? Having played all these games through now, I can say pretty safely that this one's my favourite. I feel like a lot of the points I heard against this game were overexaggerated. Didn't have a problem with the "bad story" as it wasn't super in-your-face and had writing that for the first time in the series actually landed with me and made me laugh. I liked the use of legacy characters as the main navigators for the game rather than sticking with Kali and Flynn again "because tradition" which also helps with the dialogue feeling more funny than grating IMO. "The endgame is just filler" feels so dumb to me. People told me that grinding for the cake part takes hours and is poor padding. It took us like... 10 minutes??? Pretty bland way of getting extra runtime from the game, sure, but not mind numbing and lazy like I was told to expect. Levels feel solidly designed, the gameplay is the most fun yet and it all comes together into a package that feels like the definitive experience in this series for me.

Not without its shortcomings though. The map absolutely blows and the power creep for new characters VS returning ones is way too far out of control, but while there's definitely more I could complain about, it'd just be small nitpicks for the sake of trying to pick holes. All in all, really fun game that would've benefitted from the extra scrapped content, sure, but in the state it's in... I really think it's the best in the series. Gameplay unmatched by the others, which is perfect for me as I always felt the other parts of the game that got toned down in this release weren't to my taste anyways, so you really get the best of both worlds IMO.