Wish I could erase my memory and play it again truly an amazing story with a roller coaster of emotions couldn't recommend this enough

I came into this game with zero expectations due to all of the negativity I had read online over the years, long before this game was even available on PC. This title is very divisive and some people will like it, some people won't. I think this game is a solid 8/10, but definitely not up there with the 'Best of all times'

While I can totally understand why some people wouldn't like the direction that this game goes, I personally think It's very over-hated, so this review is going to be focusing on all of the positives:

• Gameplay is significantly better than Part 1, with more creativity when it comes to combat options.
  
• Graphics are incredible, noticeably better than Part 1.
  
• Many new characters, and a stronger focus on narrative.
  
• Multiple new enemy types to figure out how to counter.
  
• Feels realistic to play - Everything you do in the game feels like it has weight to it.
  
• Open-world elements, which I personally love as I like exploration in games.

Again, far from a perfect game, but I would encourage you to try it for yourself and form your own opinion rather than being put off by negativity from others.

The Last of Us series is one of the most emotional, well written, captivating, intriguing games ever produced. What made this games so great is how it managed handle the strong expectations as a sequel of one of the most successful games of the past decade.

Part 2 features some extraordinarily vicious combat animations I’ve seen in any game I can think of. It also fits to the respective situations and tones. The most frequently witnessed crime i.e. Ellie sneaking up on an enemy before slicing its throat or stabbing it to death while holding the mouth shut is not even the most brutal animation this game has to offer. Kills with Shotguns can lead people’s extremities getting (partially or completely) blown away leading to the targeted person slowly, excruciatingly bleeding out. Trip wires and trap mines e.g. almost certainly cause the victim to get cut in two halfs making for a terrible and hard-to-digest sight.

Furthermore the fact that the POV doesn’t just includs Ellie’s contributes to the already high empathy and understanding developed for the respective characters in this series and allows you to fully find out about what lead to certains events. When Ellie was finding shelter in the theatre along with Dina and Jessie, in her mission to track Abby, I personally thought the game was close to coming to an end, but after Abby pulled up and shot Jesse it turned out it was no longer Ellie and her friends who were the hunters and, instead it was Abby herself. Afterwards Abby was to be played for lots of hours covering many, many chapters showing her story and journey, which lead to the eventual events in the theatre. It shows Abby wasn’t just a soulless, heartless, unempathetic person, who simply enjoys killing people. No, instead it showed that Abby’s father was one of the three doctors shot dead by Joel, right before their planned surgery on Ellie, which would’ve sacrified her for a vaccine, Hence, her succefful ambush on Joel, during which she brutally tormented and killed him.

Another interesting element here is quite a difference between all the existing factions and groups as well. On one hand, you got the Seraphites (or Scars), which are traditional, nature-based fighters with bows and arrows using whistling as their form of communication whenever they suspect an enemy nearby, while on the other hand you have the WLF (Washington Liberation Front), which turn out to be a very vocal, transperient and loud group fighting and dressing in a way more comparable to wars and conflicts seen nowadays.
And of course, who would‘ve guessed, there are Infected as well. They can be divided into few categories and species, but they all have one thing in common, aside from being dead and attempting to infect others by biting them. They obviously don’t communicate with the other living dead and instead just attack the humans in mobs and head-on in a very simple, yet effective and intimidating way.
Onto the special and more advanced forms of Infected: There is the Shambler, who throws noxious, toxic spore bombs at his enemies cutting off potential escape routes or obscuring enemies in the process, the Stalkers, who are able to remain invisible in Ellie’s amazing Listen mode, which massively eases their attempts to outflank and surprise Ellie in their obvious attempt to infect her. Sneaking up on the player is no issue at all for them. Especially when they got more colleagues around, who can simutaneously charge at the played character, whilst the one sneaking up can already grab it until reinforcements arrive.

The enemies are just so aware, intelligent and varied in this second part. Once suspicious of any breach they start checking and clearing the surrounding area, which includes bushes, gras and the small spaces under vehicles, right away. This automatically forces you to get familiar with the respective areas and use the environment to your advantage after studying it.

Being forced to resort to using the environment properly in order to advance has to be done in a way more creative way than during Part 1, in which you mostly just had to use a floating palette serving as a raft for Ellie to reach and climb up a point, which couldn’t be accessed by Joel from the water.
Part 2 is way more different when it comes to that. It offers so many contextual challenges such as angling a rope to swing from one room to another locked one or navigating around a series of well-placed trip wires to name a few. This sequel just makes much, much better use of its surroundings and beautiful environment than its predecessor, preventing it to solely be reduced to some sort of attraction useful for taking gorgeous screenshots and instead fully incorporates that into the players‘ experience and gameplay. That’s a massive plus.

Although that game is not open-world, it still allows you to conduct thorough explorations learning about the lost history, short stories and last moments about corpses you’ll come across in the process. Lots of which can be found out about in the rough, beat up and run down remains of a Seattle district destroyed during the pandemic. That very district causes you to be fully immersed its exploration, unlike in anything you could ever come up with. There are so many former shops, ruins and abandoned, yet well preserved buildings awaiting discovery and exploration, which isn’t done solely by the players, but company as well, who keeps exploring while the player is busy reading a left note. That’s a huge Pro to me. The colleagues don‘t just stupidly wait for the player to finish reading, but instead go on to explore the respectives sites all by themselves.

Conclusion: The Last of Us Part 2 is a stunning and brilliant masterpiece more than worthy of its predecessor. Now after I’ve just finished the story I can understand why this game has received so much universal acclaim and countless rave reviews. It improved every aspect from its predecessor and raised the bar to a level almost impossible to reach. It just delivered in every aspect. I can’t believe I never touched this game before, let alone watched a Let’s play of it.