As a lifetime gamer getting pretty old, I am extremely hard to please, but these games just have it in my opinion. The whole series is wonderful, and the last episode is brilliant. Without going into lengthy review, here is what I appreciate most:

- No mundane adventure puzzlework - no makeshift lockpicks composed of paperclips, no carrying tons of junk like various sticks, duct tape pieces, ropes and so on and combining it madly to get the improbable, out of the many options solution the designer deemed the only correct. And I am looking at you, Moebius Rising, with those light seeking puzzles while having a smartphone in the protagonist's pocket.

- Likable, strong characters sketched in a few, but powerful brush strokes. Attention to detail in dialogues, clever references, development of the protagonists.

- Beautiful, lively 2D pixel art full of subtle lighting and mood. Very atmospheric, art that "has a soul".

- Pathos kept within reasonable limits. No battles to save the universe, though the Epiphany finale threaded on a thin ice.

I am subtracting a half-point only for the latest part of the Epiphany which IMO had pacing problems and quite maddening puzzle in the end, but I managed to solve it without external help, so it was passable all and all.

Fantastic revival of a nearly extinct genre of 2D adventure games from a team full of talent. Thank you very much and good luck in your future projects!

Yeah, it was definitely the strongest point in the series. Kind of the way a series should end right?

I agree. I find most finales mediocre at best and this one was pretty solid. The moment Rosangela and her aunt were sitting on the cliff was both beautiful and dismal.

!!!SPOILERS!!!
After second playthrough (to hear the commentary) I felt kind of bad for Joe... I mean, without home, without documents, without any knowledge of the modern world tech and totally alone.
Wonder if Rosa destroyed all other Bestowers sending away their guides.
Still, great conclusion to great series. Shame it's over...

This occured to me when he was standing there in his old suit alone. But the USA is full of unregistered immigrants, I guess he will eventually manage, at least to some degree.

I like Blackwell series a lot but I am glad Gilberts had guts to stop it when it was at its best moment and not milk it to its 10th+ episode.

Well, somehow he got the ashes so maybe he presented himself as Rosa's relative? One more before this wouldn't hurt :) Remember there is a bunch of vampires feeding on life energy and the only people who could do something about them were cut from the game \ canon :)

Oh right. Maybe it was intentionally left open for fanfic magic? :D

Things like Crackwell :)

No, they didn't! It even has commentary option.

SPOILERS are contained within this post I though about that. But think that he can just take Rosangela's apartment keys out of her pocket, take her cash and get a job at a bar or something, so he really isn't in that bad a situation considering he has just been resurrected, right?

---

This game. Oh my, this game. I feel videogames are living a dangerous time with all the crap shovelware coming out. But this game, this is just pure gold.

Of all genres, is it going to be a practically dead genre as are graphic adventure games that is going to set an example for the industry? Or perhaps I'm just a 27 year old idealistic nostalgic fart?

I did go into length review, and got a bit too long for posting it as a GOG review. Here it is in case you are curious:

http://pastebin.com/QmPEDsS9

Just finished the game and I'm speechless. It was realy really good. I feared for a bad cliche sad ending. But it's beautiful somehow thank you dave

I disagree, for me the strongest point was convergence.
The ending of epiphany felt...half assed and rushed. I'm not against a plot twist or anything (resonance had an awesome one) but i felt in epiphany, it fell flat and some parts of the game felt underused.
Also...the search feature on the myphone is basically useless, you use it once or twice in the game and that's it. Can't even find flavor text, can't find rosa in it (she was in the previous ones), etc.
Still enjoyed it but...not as much as the others.

I agree with you 100%.

SPOILERS

Just finished entire series, which I started playing this monday. At first I was like "Glasses wearing, green eyed redhead? Where do I sign in? :D". Then I was like "Oh, I even like her and she's anti-social, cool... Oh wait, I like her... she's going to die, isn't she?". And finally I was like "... f*ck".

But anyway, yup, I liked it, but then again, it's point'n'click adventures, I'm extremely easy to please with them. Although I must say, I'm kind of disappointed in Epiphany. I feel like fighting this "vampire" club would be much more interesting than rogue spirit (not that I think she didn't have enough motivation). And I didn't like the closeup face art for Rose in this part (and Deception too).

As for gameplay for the entire series, it's nice, no hair pulling puzzles although it took me a while to get used to the idea of repeating same line of questioning to get results (click on the unchanging name until the dialog repeats). And it took me forever find out that you can click on notes on the piano, but other than that there isn't much of pixel hunt. I also found Epiphany to be the easiest but that's probably in no small part thanks to getting used to series logic. Though I still got suck for a while in this one because I somehow completely forgot about Joey and his ability for a moment xD

My personal favourite is Convergence.

Jeez, that endgame. This crack-in-the-sky, the-world-is-going-to-blow-up, WE'RE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN SAVE THE DAY stuff really doesn't feel like it fits with this series.

The ultimate problem is ironically one of the great strengths of this series; the one thing it excels at is small-scale, bittersweet-at-best stories about death and sadness. There's not really any possible final act to that kind of story. Hence the awkward need to conjure up some overblown comic-book stuff. The soul vampires from the previous game were a similarly bad idea to try to raise the stakes after so many games.

The final "twist", if deserves to be called that, especially strikes me as trying too hard. Golly, if anyone thought Rosa would die at the end of a series about death, I bet no one thought Joey would be ALIVE as well. Kind of undercuts the whole dying-is-sad thing though.

It's still mostly a very good game because it simply once again spends most of its time doing what it is good at, and it was certainly time to bring the series to a close, but it got rocky at the end there.