Where to start? Look, very few people are gonna call it the best Gears of War game and that's just fine, but it's pretty stubborn of one to suggest that this is the end.
The multiplayer is at its best, with one of the addicting and satisfying gameplay loops ever as well as Horde and Escape being great PvE distractions and the progression system being very good. I dunno if there's a game out there I've invested more hours into multiplayer-wise. It's been mastered.
Now for the weak stuff: the story. Well it's not bad, it starts out pretty good with all of the characters being very likable (or in one instance, hatable, but that's on purpose), and the Swarm are still really cool. Sure, they're not as cool as the Locust, but they are still very cool. Anyways as the game progresses you see the director make some... interesting decisions about the game. Because of how Gears 4 ended off, Kait is the primary protagonist. She's a good character and all but unfortunate for her Gears of War is full of amazing characters so she comes off as the weakest. Anyways for much of the game you're in an open-world area which is a really odd decision for a Gears of War game. The skiff was fine and it was cool to explore the world of Sera, but it was really a waste of time. Well, the story continues and you bump into some fan-favorite characters that remind you that Kait being a good character is far from good enough. But my biggest problem is the end: where you are supposed to choose between saving Del or JD, the other dying. This is easily one of the WORST story decisions in any game, most especially for Gears of War. Del has been nice to Kait all game but anybody who's studied storytelling at an amateur level clearly know that JD should be saved and letting the player decide is just a lazy way of forcing the player into a hard decision, when in reality it's pretty easy to choose Del, even though JD is best for the story. The reason is because Del's character progression is seemingly finished, this seems like a really great place to kill him off. JD though? No, not at all! There is so much more for his character progression, and Kait's character progresses more with JD's survival (due to their feud which at first was a good part of the story but quickly became boring). There's no question this story wasn't gonna be the best and was probably gonna be the worst and that's okay because the competition is super tight. But to end it like that??? Easily one of the most shortsighted, amateurish decisions anyone could make. It still pisses me off all of these years later. But at least the multiplayer was near-perfect. Those were good times. I have hope for Gears of War 6, but a lot less than I have had for the others - again which isn't all that bad because the rest were so great (besides Judgement) but that ending is the worst decision in Gears history besides Judgement's gameplay. Ooh, that was really bad, but that's for another review.
The multiplayer is at its best, with one of the addicting and satisfying gameplay loops ever as well as Horde and Escape being great PvE distractions and the progression system being very good. I dunno if there's a game out there I've invested more hours into multiplayer-wise. It's been mastered.
Now for the weak stuff: the story. Well it's not bad, it starts out pretty good with all of the characters being very likable (or in one instance, hatable, but that's on purpose), and the Swarm are still really cool. Sure, they're not as cool as the Locust, but they are still very cool. Anyways as the game progresses you see the director make some... interesting decisions about the game. Because of how Gears 4 ended off, Kait is the primary protagonist. She's a good character and all but unfortunate for her Gears of War is full of amazing characters so she comes off as the weakest. Anyways for much of the game you're in an open-world area which is a really odd decision for a Gears of War game. The skiff was fine and it was cool to explore the world of Sera, but it was really a waste of time. Well, the story continues and you bump into some fan-favorite characters that remind you that Kait being a good character is far from good enough. But my biggest problem is the end: where you are supposed to choose between saving Del or JD, the other dying. This is easily one of the WORST story decisions in any game, most especially for Gears of War. Del has been nice to Kait all game but anybody who's studied storytelling at an amateur level clearly know that JD should be saved and letting the player decide is just a lazy way of forcing the player into a hard decision, when in reality it's pretty easy to choose Del, even though JD is best for the story. The reason is because Del's character progression is seemingly finished, this seems like a really great place to kill him off. JD though? No, not at all! There is so much more for his character progression, and Kait's character progresses more with JD's survival (due to their feud which at first was a good part of the story but quickly became boring). There's no question this story wasn't gonna be the best and was probably gonna be the worst and that's okay because the competition is super tight. But to end it like that??? Easily one of the most shortsighted, amateurish decisions anyone could make. It still pisses me off all of these years later. But at least the multiplayer was near-perfect. Those were good times. I have hope for Gears of War 6, but a lot less than I have had for the others - again which isn't all that bad because the rest were so great (besides Judgement) but that ending is the worst decision in Gears history besides Judgement's gameplay. Ooh, that was really bad, but that's for another review.