To be honest, I’ve also had the feeling of finishing most of them late at night, but I attribute this to bad pacing. Not that I didn’t enjoy the endings anyways!
All these games are great, all for different reasons. But I got to gush a little about IV, I just love it. This is a game full of moments, big and small. I love helping the rebels win in the first two missions, it’s so great when you knock out the last bad guy and all of the ai start cheering. Or the night-time stealth mission where you tail a guy while staying out after a curfew, that all feels like the developers flexing about how versatile their stealth mechanics can be. There are other smaller, moments, like dealing with back pain after stalking around too much, or escaping from an ambush while your friend poops his pants. These are all simple set pieces, really, but they feel so much more ingrained into the mechanics of the game. Even the return to shadow moses, the most encounter-light chapter in the game, benefits from letting the player explore and reminisce. The gameplay conveys so much of the feeling of the game, in much more concrete way than other titles in the series.
My luke warm take is that the boss battles in this game are generally pretty bad, and IV’s are genuinely uncomfortable on top of that. My Hot take is that I’m not the biggest fan of 2, I just don’t know how to appreciate it.