My Thoughts on The Last of Us Part II

The first part of this review will be spoiler free, however I don’t think I can properly summarize how I feel about this game without delving into spoilers eventually, so I will give a proper warning when I get to that point.

But first, let’s go over some of the basics in The Last of Us Part II:

THE GAMEPLAY:
My main criticism of the game actually does not lie in the story (though I do have some qualms there too). Rather, it lies in the gameplay, in particular how repetitive it gets. It isn’t bad at all in the beginning, but by the second or third chapter I felt like the gameplay got extremely stale. Combat was incredibly frequent and felt like the exact same thing every time; stealthily kill as many mooks as you can without getting caught, because getting seen too early is a death sentence. This doesn’t sound too terrible at first, but it happens so frequently and so constantly that it gets really dull after even a few hours. It truly feels like the sheer number of enemy encounters exist solely to pad out a game that realistically could have been the same length as the first one and been just fine.

Puzzles also feel less creative than they did in the first game. Basically every puzzle feels like it’s just “this door is locked, let’s find another way around.” It got egregious enough that by the mid to late game I would walk up to a door, say to myself, “It’s locked,” and then be right roughly 90% of the time.

It’s been a long time since I played the first game, but I swear I do not remember it being this repetitive. Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don’t remember ever getting tired of the gameplay there. But here I actually dropped to Very Light difficulty halfway through; not because I was struggling with the difficulty, but because I was so unbelievably bored that I just didn’t wanna try anymore.

Another thing I didn’t like was the much lower emphasis on the Infected. While they aren’t the only adversary in TLOU1, they are still established as the primary threat. Part 2 puts much more focus on the human enemies, but as a result the Infected feel like not much more than an afterthought.

In terms of actual mechanics, the gameplay works fine though. I just think it severely lacks variety.

STORY:
I don’t hate the story, but I am not really in love with it either. I think it had a lot of really great ideas, but it fumbles the execution. A lot of this will fall into spoiler territory, though, so I will elaborate more further down. I will say though that the story’s pacing is very off; two times it felt like the end of the game was near, only for it to continue on for several more hours from that point. By then it just felt unnecessary and like it was overstaying its welcome. The entire final act didn’t need to happen at all in my opinion.

I also don’t really like how it feels like the game frames Joel and Ellie’s actions as if they are both unequivocally in the wrong. The entire point of the first game is that every single person had a gray morality to them. Everyone’s actions could be seen in either a positive or a negative light. That’s not the case here; there is an overall negative and “this is wrong” vibe going on with the narrative.

The story is also overall very bleak which, while not completely surprising given the setting, is in stark contrast to the first game, where one of the underlying themes of the game is hope. Part 2 is a game that feels truly devoid of any feeling of hope.

GAME LENGTH:
This ties into the repetitiveness of gameplay and pacing of the story, but I simply feel like this game was too long. I feel like I’m in the minority here, but I really don’t enjoy when games are really long simply for the sake of being really long. It results in a lot of padding that ultimately feels unnecessary, when the same story could be told just as effectively in less time. Games being long is fine if it’s necessary, but it has to feel necessary. It didn’t here. Incidentally, this is an issue I also had with Final Fantasy VII Remake.

LGBT THEMES:
As a disclaimer, I am speaking on these points as a heterosexual cisgender male. So there are some aspects of this topic that I will never truly understand. If there is some detail about this that I missed, I am more than open to hearing other point of views.

In regards to Ellie’s sexuality, I feel like it was handled well. The game does not put heavy emphasis on the fact that she is lesbian, nor that she is in a same sex relationship, and simply treats it as another aspect of her character. I believe this is the correct way to go about it: to treat it like it’s normal, because it should be. The only time that it’s put into heavy focus is with a small plot point at the beginning that gets revisited again at the end. I see this as okay.

As for the transgender character, I didn’t see an issue with them at the time, and I was legitimately surprised to discover who it was. However, upon reading some reactions from others, I can see where the criticism is coming from; their entire character revolves around the fact that they are transgender and ostracized for it, and it doesn’t really touch upon it any more than simply being a plot point. This is something that I feel was a good idea that could have been executed better.


I will give my final verdict now, that way those who want to see it without spoilers don’t have to risk scrolling to the bottom of this.

FINAL VERDICT:
The Last of Us Part II, while not a terrible game, definitely suffers from pacing issues, repetitiveness, and questionable execution of solid ideas. I wouldn’t say I regret playing it, but I am not keen on revisiting it anytime soon.

I give it a 7 out of 10.


With that being said, I want to go into detail into some other things. From this point on, things will be spoiler heavy, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, STOP HERE. You have been warned.





































JOEL’S DEATH:
Quite frankly, I saw this coming from a mile away. The only thing that surprised me was just how early it happened. I don’t really have an issue with him being killed off, because this is a world where literally anyone can die at any moment, and the fact that it was done so unceremoniously also kind of just fits with the setting. I still think all of the flashback scenes with Joel and Ellie are among the most powerful in the game, and honestly it just makes the fact that he’s gone that much more heart wrenching. The pair’s dynamic remains the most interesting in the game, even if Joel is dead for almost all of it.

I understand why people are upset about the fact that he was killed, or how it happened, but I implore those who feel like it was cheap or pointless to realize something, and I say this from my own experience: death is unceremonious. Death is sudden. Death is cruel. And death does not care about whether someone deserved it or not. That is reality. Death comes when you least expect it, and it fucking sucks ass when it does. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have a problem with Joel’s death, because I know what it feels to have someone you care about just suddenly be gone.

ABBY:
I will say that I did eventually have some degree of sympathy for Abby. Her motivations make sense, since Joel did kill her father and doom the entire human race from having any chance for a vaccine. The parallels between her and Lev’s dynamic and Joel and Ellie’s was an interesting one, and I like how Lev motivates her to give up her revenge and find new hope in a similar way to how Ellie gave Joel a reason to hope.

That being said, the fact that her primary moment of playability is thrown right into the middle of the game does feel like it really takes away from Ellie being the main character. And while there is a (mostly scripted) fight at the end of the game where you fight Abby as Ellie, the primary battle between them is played as Abby against Ellie. It should have been the other way around because, even if I had some sympathy for Abby, I still had more investment in Ellie.

Tying into how the game paints Joel and Ellie as if they are unequivocally wrong, it also feels like it tries to paint Abby as if she is fully justified in her revenge, when really she is no better than Ellie. It’s hypocritical as hell.

THE ENDING:
I mentioned this above, but I’ll elaborate more here. The entire last act didn’t need to happen. The game should have ended with Ellie and Abby’s fight in Seattle, where Abby spares Ellie and Dina at Lev’s request. From here I think a proper ending would be for both Abby and Ellie to realize what their quests for revenge did to themselves and their loved ones, and come to terms with it and move on. Instead, Abby is the only one that realizes this. Ellie can’t let go of this and tries to fight Abby to the death even when they’re both running for their lives. And the moment where she does finally choose to let go happens suddenly and completely out of nowhere. And to top it all off, Abby gets away and gets to continue her life with Lev. Ellie, in contrast, loses everything. Joel is dead. Jesse is dead. Tommy hates her. Dina leaves her. She even loses two of her fingers and can’t play guitar anymore. At the end of all this, Ellie truly has nothing, but she’s no more guilty than Abby. Again, hypocrisy at its finest.




I said it above but I’ll say it again to close this out. The Last of Us Part II is a game with great ideas that’s marred by questionable at best execution. It’s not terrible, but it’s not the masterpiece that the original game was.