That was a very unsatisfying ending. (Aka "egad, did this franchise plummet in #4)

[CykutaVirosa]

The first thing I noticed was that the game got really disturbingly uglier. The backgrounds are filled with overly smooth gradient that may look nice on watercolour paintings but looks lazy as all hell in retro pixellated graphics - especially since the only real advantage of such graphics is the available mosaic of shapes and colour shades. See Monkey Island 1 and 2 for details.
And the character sprites are atrocious. Honestly, I hope the artist credited for them used a pseudonym. Rosa's walk is especially terrible. Be strong, future players.

Secondly, the note-analysis took a weird turn. I know it was a controversial feature (I suffered through two commentary walkthroughs in Legacy and Unbound, gods help me), but keeping it reduced to this weird perfunctory use was the worst solution. It's unsatisfying to people who like the Discworld Noir's idea of investigative notebook (like me) and probably still grating to people who don't.

But, most importantly, the plot took a weird turn and then collapsed onto a rather unsatisfying ending. I've spent one game (#1) dealing with unpleasant, hostile Joey, then two games dealing with the Countess and Madeleine. There was a nice and creepy possibility that Joey was (actively) the reason for Lauren's coma and overall a nice possible antagonist, there was some ambiguity about Madeleine.
Then #4 comes along and just throws all that out of the window in order to give me a new Big Bad with a boring design, boring name, boring voice, and some spoooky organisation that we know literally nothing about. Are they phoney mediums? Energy vampires? Or just people who make old ladies change wills? Oh I can't waaait to find out.

And what's with the final confrontation? Did I really just watch two men play literal tug-o-war with the female protagonist? Did I really have to use friggin' negging on Rosa, to repeatedly call her a worthless nobody to get her to act? While talking of good things and of how we helped victimised people achieved nothing and played into the villain's goals?

That felt really disgusting. Honestly.

I haven't played #5 yet, so I kinda still hope that Joey is the villain, after that negging stint at the end, but no such luck. Not after the saccharine solution to his own little mystery.
Maybe at least Madeline will be at the bottom of it all, not someone introduced at the last moment. But I'm not holding my breath for that.