Farewell, Nathan Drake. And thank you for one hell of a ride.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, out Tuesday exclusively for the PlayStation 4, will be the last hurrah for wisecracking, globetrotting fortune hunter Nathan Drake, according to the game’s creators. Is this much-anticipated fourth and final chapter in the Uncharted franchise a worthy goodbye for one of the greatest action-adventure heroes of the current gaming generation?

Yes. It really is. And not just for the obvious reasons, such as white-knuckle gun battles, exotic locations and ridiculously elaborate ancient puzzles to solve. It’s a game with a bigger world – and a bigger heart – than any other Uncharted, full of love for the games that have come before it and the fans who have been on board since 2007’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune introduced us to Nate, Elena, Sully and friends. As this epic adventure comes to a (thief’s) end, here are 10 reasons why I love Uncharted 4.

(Tread carefully, fortune hunters: While I won’t spoil any of the surprises in Uncharted 4 – and there are some big ones – I will talk about a few story specifics and action highlights. If you want to experience the game with completely fresh eyes, I give you a hearty salute and suggest you steer clear.)

1. The story is rock solid

Every Uncharted game revolves around Nathan Drake hunting for some mythical treasure or lost city. Uncharted 4 is no different: Nate is scouring the world for the fabled riches of Capt. Henry Avery, a 17th-century buccaneer who is rumoured to have established a pirate utopia called Libertalia. This time, though, it’s not (just) for the fame and fortune: Nate’s older brother Sam Drake has reappeared after being presumed dead for 15 years, and has a dire reason to pull Nate out of retirement and search for Avery’s legendary loot.

The game spools out its story in clever ways over 22 chapters — from the action-packed flash-forward that kicks things off to scenes showing us the early days of Nate and Sam’s relationship, filling in some fascinating details about their family history. While Nate, Sam and longtime mentor/right-hand man Victor Sullivan travel from Italy to Scotland to Madagascar in search of Avery’s treasure, the plot never gets too muddled or convoluted.

2. It’s brimming with heart

Uncharted 4 marks a change in creative direction for the franchise, with development studio Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley – the pair who headed up 2013’s grim post-apocalyptic adventure The Last of Us – taking over the reins from the original trilogy’s writer and creative director, Amy Hennig.

While the Uncharted series has always featured fleshed-out characters and snappy dialogue, Druckmann and Straley’s influence is strongly felt here. In a game about a hero who can shrug off bullets and tumble off cliffs without so much as a twisted ankle, Uncharted 4 humanizes Nathan Drake in ways we’ve never seen before, as he tries to balance the responsibilities of a normal life with his thirst for adventure. The quiet moments between Drake and his wife, Elena, are some of the most emotionally authentic I’ve seen in a game.

3. It looks absolutely amazing

Naughty Dog re-released the original Uncharted trilogy last year with updated visuals for the PS4, but Uncharted 4 shows what these insanely talented developers can do when building from the ground up for the current-gen console. The world of Uncharted 4 is exploding with colour and detail, the character animation is astoundingly fluid and it’s easily the most visually impressive PlayStation game to date.

I lost count of the number of times I stopped in my tracks just to focus on a small detail, like some guys painting a wall in a busy Madagascar marketplace or the piles of painstakingly recreated historical artifacts lining the shelves of an explorer’s sprawling home. The game is full of hundreds of tiny details that are there simply to make the world feel more alive.

4. It’s got some of the best action scenes of the series

Thanks in part to the power of the PS4, Uncharted 4’s action setpieces are more explosively over-the-top than just about anything the franchise has done before. From an insane car chase through the streets of a hilly coastal city (this is the first game in the series to feature a fully drivable vehicle, and it’s used to great effect) to a tense firefight in and around a crumbling, half-flooded pirate mansion, the whole thing plays like an action movie with a billion-dollar budget.

5. The performances are phenomenal

Naughty Dog has always set the bar high for cinematic storytelling in video games, but the digital performance-capture techniques used in Uncharted 4, combined with the talented actors providing the characters’ voices and movement, tops anything it has done before.

One small example of many: there’s a scene in which Nathan Drake, having just discovered an important new clue, babbles excitedly about Avery’s treasure while Elena listens. “That’s incredible,” she says, but we know from the look of love and heartbreak on her face that she’s not talking about her husband’s story, but rather his addiction to the thrill of the chase, and what it might mean for their own troubled relationship.

To be able to read the emotions of computer-generated characters, rather than having them spell out their feelings through dialogue, is a rare achievement in games.

6. The villains are evil without being cartoonish

Uncharted has always had memorable bad guys and girls, but Uncharted 4 has two of my favourite villains in the franchise – wealthy and egotistical treasure hunter Rafe Adler and badass mercenary leader Nadine Ross.

Rafe and Nadine have a complicated history with each other and the Drake brothers, and while they’re definitely the antagonists of the piece, their motivations and reactions make sense, and they’re a ton of fun to watch whenever they’re in the mix.

7. It has a fantastic, old-school Easter egg

If you haven’t yet heard how Naughty Dog salutes its gaming history in Uncharted 4, I’m not going to ruin the surprise, other than to say it’s an adorable scene that takes place as Drake and Elena are relaxing at home.

What makes it even more special is this little nugget ties into their relationship in a meaningful way and has a lovely and unexpected callback much later in the game.

8. It does some clever things to enhance replayability

Fans of Uncharted have their favourite moments in each game – the entire train sequence in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves remains one of the franchise’s best – and it’s always fun to go back and replay them after finishing the story.

With Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog has handpicked 35 action-heavy encounters that players can go back and replay at will without having to slog through earlier chunks of any given chapter. It’s great fun to revisit these scenes to try new tactics and weapons, like clearing an area of enemies using only stealthy takedowns or seeing how many mercenaries you can run over with Drake’s jeep.

9. Online multiplayer is a blast

I’ve poured countless hours into the multiplayer modes of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – particularly the freewheeling capture-the-flag variant, Plunder – because there’s something about the game’s mix of fluid traversal and furious gunplay that just clicks. Uncharted 4 builds on that with the addition of some wild new gameplay elements, including AI sidekicks that can be summoned into battle and mystical powers that can turn the tide of a firefight.

There’s also a ton of fun stuff to unlock in the multiplayer modes, from new characters in wild outfits (want to play as Uncharted 3’s Katherine Marlowe dressed like she’s attending the Royal Ascot? You can!) to dozens of hilarious animated taunts (such as cracking open a beer over the corpse of your fallen foe). The caveat is that, while all of these goodies can eventually be unlocked by playing the game, impatient players like me will probably resort to spending real-world cash to access them immediately.

10. It’s the end of Uncharted. Or is it?

As much as I loved playing Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, I’m OK with this being Nathan Drake’s final adventure. While Naughty Dog has added new tricks and tweaks to the formula and polished everything to a brilliant shine, it’s becoming harder to make Drake’s climbing/shooting/exploring triumvirate feel completely fresh, especially in the face of robust competing franchises like the rebooted Tomb Raider. Short of completely reimagining what an Uncharted game can be, this blueprint has been taken just about as far as it can go, and there are times in this game when familiarity begins to creep in a little.

But while Naughty Dog claims this is the end of the road for Nathan Drake, the game’s surprising epilogue offers some fascinating possibilities for the future the franchise. This may be one particular thief’s end, but if Uncharted decides to reappear in our lives sometime down the road, it could be a treasure still worth pursuing.