23.2 hours played
Written 27 days ago
[b]Spoiler warning:[/b] This review contains uncensored spoilers for this game and others in the series throughout. For those wanting to avoid spoilers, though, everything above the first heading is spoiler-free.
Never, in a million years, did I think this was how my review of this series was going to go. This is an ambitious work by an ambitious and clearly talented developer, and it deserves to be praised for its successes. With some exceptions, the game is visually excellent. Some features, like the combat and inventory systems, are executed better than in any other AVN I’ve played. The lore is phenomenal; as a fan of quality world-building, there were moments that left me absolutely giddy with excitement. But after putting in well over a hundred hours of playtime across four games, two years, and multiple playthroughs, when it comes to the finale, I don’t think they managed to stick the landing.
For this reason, I’m taking the unconventional step here of rating the game fairly highly, but giving it a negative recommendation. For all its strengths and high points, when I finished the game and sat back in my chair, it was clear to me that the time I had invested wasn’t worth it for the ending that I got.
[h2]The Ending[/h2]
I’m going to focus mainly on the ending, because that’s where everything fell apart for me.
Very few series in this genre span three separate games. This one spans four. I think that’s about the limit for me—the point at which I’m ready for closure, for all the loose ends to be tied up and resolved. Due in large part to playing the second season with Sandbox mode off (a huge mistake, in hindsight), I’ve racked up, in total, 132 hours in this series over two playthroughs. So it made me genuinely angry when I discovered that this series not only ends quite abruptly, but does so without wrapping up much of anything at all.
I leaned [i]hard[/i] into building my spell skills in seasons 3 and 4, expecting that they would be used in the final fight. They weren’t. You fight and kill one grunt early on, but otherwise the last hour or so plays out as a cutscene. For those unfamiliar, leveling your spells requires a [i]lot[/i] of repetitive grinding through QTEs. Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed to find that, in the end, all of that effort was for naught.
I chose Dakota as my love interest this time around, after choosing Haley in my first playthrough (which consisted of only seasons 1–3). I finished Dakota’s story missions prior to starting the finale—I figured it would matter for the ending. It didn’t. Dakota leaves. No, literally—you finish her story, and she leaves. She graduates, gives up magic to write her book, and that’s it. There’s no relationship outcome; she plays no role in the finale; there’s not even a “where are they now?” type montage showing where the characters end up. When Dakota stops by your hospital bed after the final fight, she does so in a group with Haley and Eli and utters a generic, milquetoast platitude about how she “hates to see him like this,” a line that conveniently works regardless of your story decisions.
Frankly, I’m stunned. After four seasons, I figured there would at least be [i]something[/i]. They had such a long run-up, so much time to plan outcomes for each of the characters… and it seems to me that they just [i]didn’t[/i]. I actually laughed in disbelief when Arthur came by to share the “good news”: as a reward for defeating the Overlord and saving the wizarding world, the Ministry of Magic has offered you an [i]internship[/i]! You know, once they’re done grafting all your skin back on, of course.
Now, as I said at the top, there [i]are[/i] things to like here. Things that push the genre forward. Things that should be encouraged and imitated by other developers. But while I would like to say that I could be completely objective and evaluate all parts of this game equally, I just can’t. The ending left such a bad taste in my mouth that it overshadowed the positive experience I had leading up to it. It’s clearly meant to be a bridge to a new, as-yet-unannounced series, but that’s not what I signed up for. That’s not what “Final” means.
[h2]Addendum: AI and Writing[/h2]
I really don’t want to get into the business of policing the use of AI in AVNs, but that’s where we’re at now, so let’s get to it. I am [i]almost certain[/i] that the prologue for this season was written by a large language model, or at the very least, heavily edited by one. While there’s always the chance that I’m wrong, I feel that I’ve played this series for enough time now to have an instinctive sense for its writing style. And to me, this game’s prologue sticks out like a sore thumb, in addition to bearing many of the hallmarks of LLM output.
The prologue is the only part of the game that makes me feel this way, but that’s as baffling as it is extenuating. Why only that part? Did I miss signs of AI use elsewhere? Especially for visual novels, where the writing is a core part of the work—I think this is potentially compromising on both an artistic level [i]and[/i] an ethical one. When players can no longer trust that their games are made by humans, it becomes an optics problem not just for those specific games, but for the genre itself. It cheapens the craft, it lowers player standards, and it paves the way for opportunistic cash grabs.
[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
That brings us to the rating. This review is significantly less polished than many of the others that I’ve written, in part because I was so torn about my time with this game that I sat on my notes for over three weeks, debating how to properly put my thoughts into writing. I wrote an entire section about continuity issues between seasons which I’ve left out because, incredibly, I’m already hitting Steam’s character limit. In any case, at this point, almost a month after playing, I’m ready to move on, so I’m publishing what I have. In some ways, maybe this review is an uncanny reflection of the game that made it—something long in the making that, despite fanfare and great effort, fails to deliver a satisfying conclusion.
A disappointed, frustrated, and deeply conflicted 7/10.
