don't watch the show, play games instead

While The Last of Us Part II Remastered may not be as good as its predecessor, it is still phenomenal and an easy recommendation. From my memory, the first game, which I did not play until it came to Steam in the form of a remake a few years ago, had better story, better characters, better pacing, and better graphics. However, the first game set an exceptionally high bar, so saying this game falls short in a lot of ways isn’t exactly a knock against it. The Last of Us Part II still manages to tell one of the most compelling and engaging stories I’ve seen, while making some nice gameplay improvements over the first

Throughout my review I’m going to try not to spoil anything and use spoiler tags where I feel they are needed, but this is a game that’s really hard to talk about without saying things that some may view as spoilers, so while I will use spoiler tags where I feel they are necessary, if you want to go in completely blind as I would recommend, I suggest you stop reading my review now and know that I do highly recommend this game.

The Last of Us Part II is divided into 3 parts. You’ll know when you get to the second and third parts. In the first part, which took me about 16 hours, you play as Ellie from the first game. I say “about” 16 hours, because I was so engrossed in the game I forgot to write down an exact time stamp. Some years have passed since the first game and she’s older now. I enjoyed playing as her because I like her character, but they definitely fell into something I see a lot of sequels do where they make characters more aggressive, confrontational, and give them other negative traits seemingly just to create drama and lead them down a solo path. I’m never a fan of this, but it felt worse in this game due to the character driven nature of the first one. Part of what made the first game so good was the constant dialog and interaction between Ellie and Joel, but for many parts of this game, Ellie is alone. Even without that though, the first game keeps introducing new interesting characters that Joel and Ellie interact with for parts of their journey. That felt completely gone from this part. It ended up being a really weird experience. It often felt like Ellie was just wandering around somewhat aimlessly without any character interactions to drive the plot, until a random flashback would happen and develop characters and story. At times this made me feel like it was dragging on a bit, but I still found myself very engaged and wanting to see what would happen next. Unfortunately, this also meant that when characters get killed, as Naughty Dog seems to really enjoy doing, there isn’t any emotional attachment to make it feel anything.

Eventually, you get to the second part, which, in an as spoiler free way as I can say it, makes you play the whole game again, but from a different characters perspective. This part wasn’t as long taking only about 10 hours, which I again say “about” since I was still so engrossed in the game that I forgot to make note of my playtime, but I would say this is a testament to how engaging this game’s story is. Normally I really like seeing stories from different perspectives, but the character they choose is someone who had almost no interaction with Ellie or her friends for most of the story and at first I was worried that it would end up feeling like one of those bad TV specials where they give a minor character an episode that adds almost nothing to the plot and feels very out of place, except much longer. While it was true that this other perspective felt a lot more like a completely separate story than a different perspective, I actually really enjoyed it. It did not suffer from a lot of the issue I had with Ellie’s part. You pretty much always had a companion with you talking and progressing the plot, and this part of the game is a lot more linear, which is something I prefer, especially in plot heavy games such as this. Additionally, while the character in this part does a lot of bad things and is far from what I would call a good person, the story is about them trying to be better and break from their pattern, rather than letting rage consume them. I found them to be an interesting character that I enjoyed playing as. The game definitely wants you to see parallels between the two protagonists, but at times it was way too on the nose, to the point of it being super weird. For example, both characters are involved in an awkward love triangle involving a man and a pregnant woman.

The third part of the game is really hard to talk about without spoiling anything. It’s much shorter than the other two taking up the remaining of my 28.6 hours of playtime. It starts a little slow, but it is linear and plot heavy like the second part, and while it definitely had some characters acting in ways I did not like it was absolutely riveting, especially towards the end.

Outside of story, the game has a few improvements. Something that really stood out to me was how sometimes when enemies get killed, a different enemy will shout out a name, as if their friend just died. I’m pretty sure they were just reusing the same 5 or so names over and over again, but it really added a lot, even though it’s such a small thing. Another nice addition is crawling. I didn’t find I used it much outside of story and exploration, but it was neat, and did have a really neat combat implication. Sometimes when you get shot, you get knocked onto your back, but can still shoot enemies with your gun. This feels so great when it happens and shoot all the enemies before getting back up.

Overall, The Last of Us Part II is fantastic. It may not hit as hard as the first game, and the writing, characters, and pacing aren’t at the same level of the first, but this is absolutely still a top tier gaming experience that I would highly recommend.

Five years later The Last of Us 2 finally comes to PC, marking for me my first playthrough of the game, as by the time the original PS4 version came out, I had made the decision to stop playing on console. Unfortunately this meant story bits were spoiled to me, including most importantly the main plot twist. Fortunately, it didn't deter me from seeking to eventually play the game, as I trusted I'd have fun just like with most Naughty Dog titles.

About that, in a moment of mild masochistic high, I decided my first playthrough would be on Grounded difficulty. "This is very manageable, to be honest" I exclaimed during the first couple hours. Fast forward to the first human encounters I'm met by enemies with feline reflexes and eagle eyes. Gunslingers suddenly turning my direction because I was nearby the corner of their eye, or because their Spider Senses were tingling, or who knows why; either way instantly shooting me with pinpoint precision. Immense frustration ensues. One of the last encounters in particular, where enemies kept appearing from somewhere and a pile of corpses started being erected next to my hiding spot, caused enemies to spout sentences like "she must be nearby". No ♥♥♥♥, Sherlock.
Not to mention fighting hordes of infected with your toothpick or bare hands because you have no bullets, attempting to dodge every attack or die on the spot, feeling like I'm suddenly playing Punch Out or God Hand. Grueling and tense, and yet "I would do it all over again" (ha), because the combat in TLoU2 just feels good. From the shooting, to the new dodge move, to the stealth, and every animation and facial expression that accompanies it. It is just good.
Human enemies still suck a considerable amount of ass, though, indeed.

Now the story of TLoU2 follows the beats of the first game, where Ellie starts suspecting events didn't quite unfold as she was made to believe initially. Things happen, and she starts a journey in the name of "justice." But truly vengeance and violence hide under the guise of it, as she spirals more and more into self-destruction. No one is truly a saint in TLoU2, and letting go and forgiveness must be learnt to escape the cycle.

The Last of Us 2's story pulls many emotional strings -- anger, frustration, momentary respite, love, understanding, and yes, forgiveness. Understanding and attempting forgiveness. The latter is something some "gamers" seemed not to grasp, as instead they jumped into social medias to harass the writers and actors of the game due to a certain plot point, with one actress in particular, receiving death threats to herself and her family, including her newborn baby at the time. Now the game deals with its themes in a I would say mature way, but on the other hand "gamers" proved they were not mature enough for such things, and were unable to react to it reasonably, perhaps proving that users are not entirely ready to deal with certain matters in a rational, understanding manner. The reaction to Naughty Dog's new game shows things haven't changed too much, but hopefully it won't deter the developers and the actors from doing their own thing.

All that said, The Last of Us 2 is one of the company's best titles, a peak in story telling, acting and animations, and five years worth waiting for in my case.