(I was going to post this in the comments like the other two parts, but this just became way too long.)

Coming off Ozymandias, the grand finale of the End Times saga does not disappoint…mostly.

The plot is told much better, with more conversations to listen to and radio and television broadcasts to watch compared to the previous campaigns, filling out the game’s world. The fifth level has a long conversation between Corey and the janitors that you can miss completely if you’re not observant.

As for the plot itself, it begins with Jacket lapsing back into old habits, but targeting PMCs terrorizing Washington D.C. instead of the Russian mafia. You can feel his mental state deteriorating as time goes, culminating in the brilliantly presented fourth level where the dialogue-between-action method first used in End Times is used to its fullest extent. The most striking moment, however, is after the first level where he enters a strangely familiar convenience store and hallucinates the people present as friend and foe alike. After a short pep talk from what to him is Ash, he walks up to the image of Beard hoping to hear that comforting catchphrase one more time-but it never comes as the real clerk tells him to ♥♥♥♥ off instead.

Meanwhile the rifts between the Fans only grow due to a combination of anger and boredom. This culminates in Alex threatening to fight Tony and Corey running home in anger. The plot does get a little less interesting after that, with Corey rescuing Jacket after he gets captured (and you get to kill those stupid janitors to boot) and eventually executing a plan to assassinate the General and stop him from escalating to total nuclear war.

Gameplay-wise, Born Again is considerably less difficult than Ozymandias. While it is still challenging, it never enters rage-inducing territory like its predecessor. The final level is disappointing however. Everything, from the dialogue to the music is building up to another mammoth level in the vein of Death Wish, but instead it’s just a Tony punch-fest. Given the presence of weapons placed in the environment that Tony isn’t able to use, I have a feeling that it was originally planned to be another Death Wish, but the level creator couldn’t get multiple characters to work. The final boss is also disappointing, with me not realizing I had killed an important character until the cutscene played.

Still, this campaign is well worth playing, both alone and as the conclusion to a story that I’ve had fun getting invested into. It made me laugh, it made me feel, and it made me rage. One particularly entertaining moment comes right after Corey rescues Jacket – he begins talking about how everyone around him either dies or is let down and he doesn’t deserve kindness, and then Tony tells him to stop moping in a very blunt fashion. This made me laugh for a good ten seconds. Some may say that the romantic elements were unnecessary, but I personally think it works well. Corey has always been one of the more sympathetic Fans, and it’s quite clear that Jacket’s still hurting from the loss of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the first game. Frankly seeing him expressing an emotion that isn’t depression or a murderous rage makes me happy.

This saga did a great job of filling the hole that the ending of Hotline Miami 2 left behind, and I thank the creator of these levels for that.