so first I would like to mention that I have seen all of Dawko's playthriugh except for the stream he did today, I'll look at that later when it becomes an actual video, if there is anything in that stream, or anything that I missed that is relevant to what I say here please let me know in the comments. now onto my review

so to make my thoughts breif this is what I think.....it's aight. definately one of the better fnaf games, I'd even go as far as to say it's the second best, only behind fnaf VR by a teeny tiny margin.

first let me get through what I like about the game.

the animations are really good

the gamepley looks fun and smooth

the environment is massive and creative, the pizza plex is my favorite location in the series

that characters are all well designed

there are a ton of small details that I love like the ice cream servers being dressed as circus baby.

I really like freddy in this game

vanessa's jumpscare is hilarious (in fact the idea of making the nightguard an antagonist is a really good subversion of expecations)

the comic book style endings look great

I like the callbacks to prevous games

MUSIC MAN IS BACK BABYYYYYYYYYYYY

now onto my critisicms

the first is the story. this is the first fnaf game to have a consistant narrative throughout the game, the rest either have very little or no story. while the story isn't awful it's not super great either. it's unique I'll give it that. giving us the perspective of a child that got stuck in the location over night (also side note, why is it called five nights at freddy's if the game isn't five nights long like the previous instalments)

my next issue is the characters

the glamrocks and vanny were teased for two years so I was expecting them to have some personality to them, what we got was...a mixed bag. freddy himself is nice, we get to interact with him a ton in the game and get a good feel for his character. the others though... aren't as lucky. I think they're onto something with Roxxie, there is a scene with her crying in a mirror, dawko even says "wow that's kinda deep" the problem is...it's not. what is she crying about? does she have some sort of fear or insecurity (see what I did there) that we don't know about? think about it, these are sentient robots forced to perform and stay in this facility until they eventually live out their usefulness and get scrapped, the idea of them being insecure about living up to expectations could be really interesting. I swear they were SO close with Roxxie but just didn't give her the screentime (little edit here, I watched a video that explains some secret dialogue and we find out that she's upset at herself for not catching Gregory, again, interesting but only scratches the surface of what could be explored here) as for monty and chica...they're as bland as they get, I was kinda sad they wasted a heather masters performance on such a boring, nothing character when she's capable of really brining a more fleshed out character to life like circus baby, at least she's getting work.

the almost all of the main enemies work the same

there's very little variation amung the characters when they're walking around, vanny distorts your vision, vanessa's flashlight mimics yours...that's it. otherwise all five of them are the exact same gameplay wise. when Roxxie loses her eyes she becomes a bit more unique but it comes off as too little too late

underwhelming "bossfights"

when they said there were boossfights in these games I was pumped, it sounded like an awsome concept...god are they not that. first of all I had no idea what constituted as a bossfight, like does the bit where we run away from DJ music man count as a bossfight? I think it's supposed to. but these "bossfights" just feel like running away from the characters in a new environment. compare this to, say, bendy and the ink machine where you actually have to interact and FIGHT the bosses. like imagine bendy and the ink machine, but all the bosses are beast bendy, that descibes the bosses in this game. nightmare fredbear in fnaf 4 was more of a bossfight

the main villains

god william and vanny have no presence in this game. I thought vanny was going to be a big threat that would torment us throughout the game...wow.... she's not. she attacks the player maybe once or twice but other than that she's almost completely irrelivant until the very end of the game. then we get to william...he might as well not have been in this game he's so underutlized. he get's 5 minutes of screentime, no voice lines, and is "killed" just as quickly as he shows up. honestly it would have been more interesting if it was vanny in this section instead of william. giving her more of a role. or hell give us a proper bossfight against him, hell MatPat came up with a cooler idea for a william encounter. I mean I like what they did, but it feels like it could have been better considering it's the main antagonist of the entire franchise.

now with all this being said the game is still a solid 7.75/10 for me and it's getting DLC in the furutre so my opions and critizcisms could change in the future, plus I'm sure theres some secrets and little corners I haven't seen yet, I'll make a follow up if anything I missed becomes relevant.