It's a fantastic mystery romance and one of my favourite visual novels now. I'm very glad so many of my friends recommended it. It was an amazing read.
Ratings:
Case 3: 7/10
Case 2: 9/10
Case 1: 7/10
Case 0: 9.5/10
Epilogue: 8.5/10

I went into the Muv-Luv trilogy on a whim like I always do with everything I watch, read and play.

I'm one of those people who were extremely tired after a few routes in Extra while reading and it. It was not that bad per se, but classic school-life VN romance eroge aren't my thing at all, however I trusted the hype and went into Unlimited which was still kind of similar in terms of romance eroge but the settings instantly hooked me up since I love seeing realistic politics and detailed worldbuilding.

Then... I hopped onto freaking Muv-Luv Alternative, even if a lot people seem to feel it's very slow at the few first chapters, I was already loving it. It took everything that was set in the previous entry and elevated it to a majestic and powerful level as well as including an indecent level of character development especially for Takeru, even Extra was extremely well used in the process which is insane to me since as I said earlier, I was tired of Extra, and that made me like it more.

One thing that is very important about this work is how much it's human at its core, it's funny, it's sad, it's epic, it's detailed, it's everything I'm asking from a piece of fiction, emotions are very important to me and this shit made me feel EVERYTHING. MLA is a story about humanity facing a unknown threat that is eventually going to exterminate us all, it's trying to unite but we're seeing how difficult it is even though the BETAs are the enemy of ALL of us. Humans are stupid by nature, we're afraid of the unknown and that includes other continents, countries, regions and people. Basically cultural differences.

After a long and insane build-up in Alternative at seeing all of this, humanity finally united to save itself from its REAL enemy, the BETAs, there is nothing more beautiful than this, the humankind finally came to the same conclusion, and treated everyone as equal even if temporary.
It might never happen in the real world, but Kouki Yoshimune definitely wants to believe it and I also do.

MLA is extremely violent and extremely sad but it is a life-affirming story screaming at us to LIVE and aim for a better FUTURE.
Cherish the people you love, make good actions at your scale, try to understand other people whether they're culturally very afar from you or not, be passionate about what you love. In other words : LIVE.

This game is FUCKING CRAZY. I was skeptical over whether they'd top Sky the 3rd yet they somehow did.

I don't know how they did it, they somehow made three back-to-back 5-star, 10/10 games. This has NEVER happened to me in another series, even my favourites.

It's extremely emotional, the artstyle is awesome, it's fun to play (the small gameplay additions compared to Zero are appreciated), the characters are all awesome, they throw so many twists at you, the likes of which I haven't been this affected by since finishing my top 10 favourites across all media, that you can't help but binge. The backtracking is some of the least tedious in the entire genre from what I've seen. This is one of the closest things I've seen to perfection, from concept to execution, in my life. My only actual complaint is that the difficulty curve is kind of unreasonable in the last few fights of the game, but who cares, it was really hype.

And oh my GOD, the music... Trails already secured its place as #1 in terms of OST, beating Umineko, but this is on a whole other level. You have so many bangers, like the Azure Arbitrator or Mystic Core, but they're far from the only ones.

In terms of favourites, I'd place it around Utawarerumono 3. It's just that good.

I will be slowing down with my Trails binging and going through Cold Steel at a more leisurely pace so that I don't burn out but... wow, I'm definitely a fan.

Edit: NEVERMIND I HAD A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP THIS IS THE BEST SETUP GAME BESIDES UTAWARERUMONO 2, HOLY SHIT SOME OF THE MOMENTS IN THIS WERE EMOTIONAL AND HIT HARD, AND WE EVEN HAVE BETTER DOROTHY

I had no complaints with Zero until the last chapter, which was a bit of an underwhelming payoff, but until that point it was basically a perfect "setup game" with no dull moments. None of my issues from Sky FC are in this.

Aside from the mildly underwhelming finale, the "BRO WE'RE A CINEMATIC UNIVERSE BROOOOO" issue that I've been fearing with this series rears its head. In some aspects, it's really cool, what with the payoff for a character's arc in SC and 3rd (I started crying from it, it was so emotional). In others, you have the corny MCU thing of "heh, looks like I got here just in time!" and "wow [Crossbell character], you remind me of [Sky character]!" happening multiple times. I expect it to get both better with the payoffs, and worse with the corniness. But you take the good with the bad, I guess.

Otherwise, this is definitely one of the best JRPGs and videogames I've played. The combat system, characters, music, improved visuals from Sky, the Crossbell atmosphere, all of these contributed to a very fun experience. Can't wait for what Azure has in store.

"-I don't need to see the world. All I want is-

I could hear her voice with incredible clarity,
and after so many years,
I finally figured out...
what she said that day.

I don't need to see the world.
All I want is to find our home."