The Last of Us Part II (2020)

disclaimer: I only watched a playthrough, but sitting through 16 hours of it, i'd say I'm qualified

hmmm this game. I was really interested for the first half (yes ellie's half) but quickly lost interest during abby's section. I really felt like I was struggling to finish it, I was really bored.

spoilers

joel's death was very stupid and annoying in my opinion. the way he died did NOT seem like him at all, trusting people immediately and sharing his name? he would never do that. and then the whole plot just being around revenge and seeing people die left and right. idk...i wasnt into it. i didn't like abby. yes, because she killed joel. i do not care if it was justified, it still is annoying. so having to sit through 8 hours of just her gameplay was not ideal. this games aesthetics were so off to me, i couldn't imagine playing it myself. the plot overall was kinda interesting. but the ending was kinda stupid in my opinion. idk, i like the 1st one WAY more. i know this is an unpopular opinion, cause many people really like this game but for me, I wasn't a fan

Bloody, harrowing, and inhumane.

The Last of Us Part II is a fucking brutal game. The inciting incident in the story has since become one of the most divisive in gaming history, which only speaks to how effective this game's story is at getting a visceral reacting out of its audience. Ellie's Journey is somehow more compelling and more emotionally gripping than her and Joel's adventure in the first game, and it builds upon the characters in unique, interesting ways that only furthered my investment throughout this relatively lengthy campaign.

What also helps this is that gameplay has been VASTLY improved from the first game. Whereas the first game's third person stealth/action game play felt a little dated by the time I had finally gotten around to playing it, the second game's is so much more polished and allows for so much more freedom that it is the best feeling game I've played since Metal Gear Solid V. This is also helped by the incredible animation work and the absolutely incredible sound design. All of the animation work furthers the immersion in this incredibly detailed world that Naughty Dog has created, and the phenomenal art design makes it far and away the most visually stunning PS4 game I've played. The result is an immersive experience where every kill carries weight, both kinetically and thematically. Even the simple act of exploring the world this time around is much more fun and engaging than it was in the first game, and I often found myself marveling at the stunning locales that you will travel through during the campaign.

The Last of Us Part II is the perfect sequel. It builds upon the first game's gameplay and story in ways that feel meaningful, but aren't so different that it feels like a different franchise. While better, I'm still not a huge fan of encounters with the infected in this game, but there are much less common here than they were in the first game so I'd chalk that up to being a minor complaint in a game where I have virtually no complaints. Please don't be discouraged by the ridiculous backlash this game got on launch, it's a fantastic work of art and perhaps Naughty Dog's Magnum Opus

When I played The Last of Us, I had this feeling I had never had with any other piece of entertainment in any other medium. I had this feeling that maybe I was done with video games, that I had experienced something so powerful, so moving, that nothing else could ever quite compare. I had been playing video games for nearly three decades, and no narrative had ever hit me the way this one did. After a few months, it was almost like I had to teach myself how to enjoy other video games, games that weren’t going to wreck me to my core and move me to tears.

I thought a lot about The Last of Us after finishing it, and I thought a lot about why this story in particular impacted me. Had this been a movie, or a TV show, or a book, I don’t know that I’d have had such a powerful reaction to it. Frankly, The Last of Us was hitting on ideas I had seen in other mediums. But I came around to the idea that it was the interactivity of this story that made this hit so hard. I wasn’t a passive participant in the story of Joel and Ellie, I was an active ingredient to this relationship. As I watched them traverse the United States over the course of a year, I felt like my actions were strengthening this bond, that without me, this light wouldn’t shine in the darkness.

After finally playing The Last of Us Part II, I feel all of this once again. Naughty Dog has created a game that won’t soon leave my thoughts, and I once again feel like I have been part of this journey, although the intent is vastly different than it was the first time. If the first game was about Joel finding that light in the darkness of the emptiness and brutality of the world, The Last of Us Part II is about exploring if avoiding that brutality and emptiness is even possible. For me, the first game was about love, and in this sequel, I find that this is a story about dissecting the very ideas of good vs. evil, our allegiances to these characters, the cyclical patterns of revenge, regret, hatred and anger, and making the player deeply feel the emotions that these characters are feeling. I have never played a game that is attempting even close to what The Last of Us Part II is doing.

I admire the hell out of Naughty Dog for what they’re doing here. In the years since The Last of Us, I’d often thought about what a sequel could even be, and my idea revolved around yet another journey between Joel and Ellie, where the suspicions and fears of what wasn’t being said slowly bubbled to the surface until the very end. But that's the easy direction for this story to go, and instead, Naughty Dog hacks away at the idea that this could be a retread and challenges the player in fascinating ways. I’m sure the decisions made in creating this game weren’t easy, yet narratively, I can’t imagine a more perfect and needed choice.

I can’t think of another game that made me regret my decisions as I was playing it. As Ellie’s journey for vengeance plays out, I didn't want any part of these gruesome choices. The further Ellie goes, the more we can see how revenge begins to change her, and I felt the same way, as though I didn't want to go forward, but I had no choice but to be a part of this. I saw the awful things that were done in the opening hours of this game, but I knew that this could only lead to more pain and loss.

This feeling especially grew when the story shifted to Abby, and we saw just how much the decisions of the first game had altered her life and the world irrevocably. Naughty Dog made the incredibly choice to spend have this game villainizing a character that we have every right to hate, then shows her side of things, and makes us realize the characters we already love might not be the heroes that we believed them to be. It’s a fascinating deconstruction, and I’m truly shocked that the emotion that Naughty Dog decided to focus on from the first one was the uncertainty that we felt about these characters near the end of the first game. And I love that two different teams worked on this game, making it so that each of these characters feel like the main character—and the hero of sorts—in theand ir own stories.

I also don’t know that I've ever played a mainstream game that gets as bleak and disturbing as this one does. The Last of Us Part II never undersells the true danger and horrors of this world, and there are shocking moments where we can feel the deep irrelevance of things that we’ve spent hours on. I know there was one point where I was tasked with getting supplies to save one character’s life, and after a day’s long journey, that same character died the next day. But I love that sort of realism in that life doesn’t care about the long journey you’ve gone on—sometimes that doesn't matter.

I even find the length of this game fascinating. There are points where I felt that surely this game was coming to a close, only for this story to only begin its unravelling. There’s one moment where I thought the quest for vengeance was finally over, only to learn that the pain of needing revenge still remained, despite everything we've seen. But I love that Naughty Dog does this, that they push us to a point where the player doesn't even want to keep going, and again, the characters are leading the way, unable to stop until revenge has been fulfilled. I kept making excuses for these characters, sure that they weren’t really going to fight any further, and yet, the game taught me that I couldn’t know everything about what was going on with these characters.

I could go on for thousands of pages about how much I adore about what this game is doing. And yes, it looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful, the worlds are larger and more ripe for exploring, and the combat is even better than the first game. But these aren’t the things that are going to stick with me about this game. I don't care about the crafting system or getting a certain amount of achievements. What matters to me is this story and how effectively Naughty Dog once again puts me in the shoes of these characters in a way that I find awe-inspiring.

With The Last of Us Part II, Naughty Dog once again proves that this series is unlike any other. I love the daring it takes to make a game like this, the audacity, the difficult decisions, and the sheer impossibility of making the audience feel what these characters are feeling in a very deep way that I’ve never experienced in a game before. I truly love this series maybe more than any other IP that exists, and I trust Naughty Dog forever after this game. At least with The Last of Us, they’ll avoid the easy choices and explore the ideas and narrative that needs to be told, as opposed to giving the audience the same thing twice. Most companies wouldn’t even consider taking the chances that Naughty Dog does with this series and I love them all the more for it.

What a gut punch of a game. I was no big fan of The Last of Us 1, feeling that it was a generic post-apocalyptic affair. The sequel feels far more compelling, brave and complex in its narrative, doing an excellent job of depicting the darkness of man.

The way you are required to reassess your sympathies by letting you play both sides of the story is daring for such a monumental release, seeing as triple-A studios almost always play it safe in terms of storytelling. Having been heavily disappointed with close to every modern big budget title I have played the last years, it's refreshing to see the graphical fidelity, scope of set pieces and overall level of polish only achievable for giant corporations to be utilised in a gameplay experience with genuine artistic ambitions.

The only gripe I have is that the game overstays it's welcome a bit too long. While the pacing between calmness and intensity is excellent, I found the action sequences becoming a bit repetitive 15 hours in. They could have easily removed a third of the enemy areas without loosing much, creating a tighter experience.

I'm honestly quite baffled about the hate storm surrounding this title. In the same vein (albeit not always as successfully) as pieces of media such as Apocalypse Now, A History of Violence and Attack on Titan, The Last of Us Part II tackles the downward spiral of hate and the horror of warfare in a manner highly interesting for an interactive medium. The only reasonable explanation for the enormous anger some people apparently have voiced I can find, is that many entitled right-wing players loved the first game, but was chocked about the sequel not acknowledging their conservative view of how to depict minorities and LGBT-people in art, as well as frustrated by not getting the more safe sort of sequel they wanted.

Jogos em sua maior parte tendem a focar em 2 quesito: diversão e entretenimento. TLOU part 2 por mais que seja entretenimento de alta qualidade, não busca sua diversão e isso o torna o melhor jogo de 2020 e provavelmente um dos jogos mais corajosos já feitos.

Games for the most part tend to focus on two aspects: fun and entertainment. TLOU part 2 no matter how high quality entertainment is, it does not seek your enjoyment and that makes it the best game of 2020 and probably one of the most courageous games ever made.

Huge spoilers below

I respect a number of the decisions that the game made

It would have been very easy for the game to keep Joel as the only playable character, have Ellie be recaptured by the Fireflies and then you set off with Tommy. That they didn’t do that was brave. I really liked how much of this game (even down to the second last scene) was about Joel’s decision at the end of the first game (more on that later).

A few things about the game’s premise annoyed me

I mentioned to a couple of people that I found the premise for this game really flimsy. Starting us off in a thriving Jackson and then having so little of the game set there annoyed me. You travel hundreds of Ks without doing any of the travel and arrive with any bullets in your gun (I mean seriously, why would Ellie leave Jackson without multiple guns and hundreds of bullets). I also didn’t buy that Dina would leave Jackson and risk her life with Ellie after one kiss (especially when pregnant).

The game is too long and repetitive

I am a weirdo for not loving the first game, mainly because I thought the gameplay was all very basic and nothing special. The slightly open-world section at the start of Seattle was really good and was expecting we’d get a bunch of different areas like that. Unfortunately, once you leave there the game, annoyingly, becomes a corridor. Yes the combat is improved, all the optional buildings & safes were cool and the looting didn’t bother me. But apart from a few notable set pieces (the hospital as Abby was AWESOME) the gameplay is incredibly repetitive and starting from scratch (in terms of upgrades) as Abby was particularly jarring. 10 hours could be cut out of that game and nothing would be lost.

Did playing as Abby add much?

I don’t think it did, I’d love to hear some counter arguments. The best thing Abby’s involvement in the game did is show that Joel’s actions at the end of the first game had consequences. But we already knew that. It also showed Abby as incredibly similar to Ellie. And there didn’t seem to be any complexity in the comparison. I worry that they made Abby such a focus because they want to make Abby DLC or make her/Lev the focus of the next game. If you’d cut all the instances in which you played as Abby that the finale of the game still would have had the same emotional heft. The closing scenes leave you in no doubt that this game is about Ellie.

Both this and the first game are about grief

Holy shit that ending was powerful. The first ~10 hours of the game were really good but it really dragged in the middle section. Then everything that happens after Abby arrives at the theatre (for a second time) was awesome. The game knows exactly what it’s doing when it presents you with Ellie and Dina’s happy life on the farm. It wants you to think this is how the game ends. I don’t think it is a coincidence that it reminded me of Uncharted 4’s ending. Then the PTSD episodes are powerful and the flashback to the party the day before the game starts was a great choice.

Then Ellie is standing in her kitchen, wearing Joel’s jacket and you know that this young woman is completely broken and you understand why she has to go and find Abby. And that retrospectively made me understand why she had to chase Abby to Seattle in the first place. In that final chapter, I felt like there was no way that killing Abby was going to be satisfying for Ellie. And I’m glad that when she had the opportunity to kill Abby she had the same realisation – killing Abby won’t allow Joel to earn her forgiveness.

The final flashback was so powerful and hammers home that both this and the first game are about grief and the search for meaning. Joel finds meaning in protecting Ellie; he lost one daughter and isn’t willing to lose another in any circumstances. But in doing so Joel (despite trying to hide it) places a burden on Ellie that she can’t overcome – she’s desperate to have her life not dictated by Joel but also clearly loves him

To slightly undermine my point from before, the symmetry of Abby’s and Ellie’s responses to losing their father(figure)s are emblematic of the world they live in. A common trope in tv shows and movies about grief is that characters cope by escaping into vices – usually drugs, alcohol or sex – which are destructive to those around them but mainly to themselves. Here Ellie and Abby respond to grief by trying to kill those responsible for inflicting the grief upon them. And I’m really glad the game shows this to be ultimately self-destructive rather than empowering.

The game ends with Joel and Jesse dead, Tommy maimed and Ellie broken and alone – not even able to keep up her connection to Joel by playing the guitar – with the world ruled mainly by the infected and violent gangs and no vaccine. In this light, Joel’s decision to save Ellie appears to both be completely understandable and a catastrophic mistake.

The Last of Us is one of my favorite games of all time. It wasn't a masterpiece because the story was original, the story is anything but original. It was a masterpiece for the set pieces, the gray morality, the pacing, and one of gaming's all-time great character dynamics between the broken protagonist Joel and his surrogate daughter/piece of cargo Ellie. Brilliant ideas can fall flat under bad writers and decades old ideas can prosper under good writers. While I'm aware that not everyone was fond of the gameplay, at its highest difficulty it was a gripping survival game with the same dirty tricks as Resident Evil with slightly better shooting than Uncharted 3. The ultimate triumph of Part I was how it blended story and gameplay without at all comprising the agency of the protagonist Joel who often made choices the player would most likely disagree with. If you've played the first game you know about THAT scene in the final hour of the game. It was originally going to be a cutscene but letting the player act out the scene turned it from a great moment to an iconic moment in gaming. So going into Part II that is what I wanted to see more of. A game that through interactivity, manipulates the player into empathizing with an act that they would view as despicable from an opposing or even neutral standpoint.

The last thing fans of the first game are going to ask about is the graphics but an apocalypse game needs an oppressing atmosphere with glimmers of hope. The Last of Us was cutting edge for the PS3 and while the age of the textures showed on its PS4 remaster, the attention to detail was still clear. The footsteps on the ground, the characters movement when shooting a gun, things that are happening behind the players back. The Last of Us Part II isn't as photorealistic as its TV trailers but it's pretty damn close. Sweat, scrape marks from proning on the ground, the movement of the birds. Those are details that come after making a good game but are still highly underappreciated. The frame rate is good for PS4 with only a few minor dips throughout the entire game. I've heard reports of burning PS4s but my used PS4 Slim fared well. It's harder to appreciate mocap acting nowadays but that's because Naughty Dog was one of the companies that made it industry standard. They still appear to be the kings and queens of mocap. The anguish on Ellie's face in the game is beyond what you could do just with animation.

Regarding the combat, it's The Last of Us Part I. Except the gun shaking and time to draw is more realistic. You have tall grass to hide in making combat far more strategic. Clickers are even more terrifying and less predictable. Certain human enemies can shoot you with arrows that you have to physically remove. There's little stealthy infected bastards that are the ones stalking you, peeking around the corners. The upgrade pathswith the pills are more interesting. There's these doggos which you won't want to kill and with one exception, you don't have to, but they track scent so well it's almost a necessity. There's these fat mutated zombies called shamblers which are even more difficult kills than the bloaters of part I. There's explosive arrows. Enemies will whistle routinely to make sure nobody has died. I could go on and on and there's some brilliant segments and boss fights but I'll stick to the generic encounters because that'd ruin the surprise. Encounters in the first game had 2-3 ways you could go about doing them. There's several paths to take on TLOUII levels which on average are longer than the original. Sometimes it's better to stealth and sometimes it's better to throw a Molotov cocktail and break for the door. Depending on your strengths an aggressive or conservative playthrough could be equally long, probably 30 hours.

The media narrative of it's "not supposed to be fun and that's why it's good" is laughably stupid for two reasons. Firstly, I hate art critics who try to justify things with mental gymnastics. If an art piece isn't enjoyable, it's not a good art piece. The other related reason this narrative is dumb is because the game actually IS fun. Yes it's one of the most depressing games I've played with violent acts that make me wince. That doesn't mean it's not fun, there are people who enjoy watching sad movies, listening to The Cure is still fun for me. There is such thing as a "good cry". In my opinion, it's the best Naughty Dog "game" although I can sympathize with those who think Uncharted 4 was more fun.

The story is great, not as great as Part I, but what is? But it will not be great if you don't have faith in the storytellers to justify their choices which does take hours. A major success of the game compared to the first is that it's nearly impossible to walk away and say a character was more than 50% correct. People to this day try to say Joel was entirely correct in Part 1. Those people missed the point. The first half of the game, a game which is very easily split into two halves, is more stealthy, more laid back, and on surface level is pretty similar to what you'd expect. But the actions in that half of the story intentionally betray the themes of the first game, with only reminiscing of the values it used to believe. The pacing is wonkier, because it's basically an entire game plot condensed in half, but the second half is your blockbuster thriller and it's amazing. The gameplay changes to a noteable degree, it's almost as crazy as Uncharted 4, strictly action wise. The second half of the game is no doubt the controversial part of the game but it's actually the one that most aligns with the spirit of the original game with blatant parallels to the iconic cross country journey. I'm going to outright mention the scene from the first game I alluded to earlier, the hospital scene. It wasn't reasonable to expect anything to be as good as that. But it comes pretty damn close multiple times throughout the second half of the game especially during the last scripted fight. There's truly stakes and you feel a lot having to be in the scene. I was getting scared about the game honestly because the first half of the game relied too much on cutscenes for effect. None of this should be taken as bashing the first half though. The first half has very charming character interactions and more importantly, this is where the game sets up its new themes, forgiveness and a related theme of revenge. How do you go about forgiving someone? Do you need to do something to get a moment of catharsis? This anger and forgiveness is directed towards multiple people. I said earlier that the first games plot was based off the relationship dynamic between Joel and Ellie. TLOU Part II is also based on that dynamic just not in the way you might imagine. It's beautiful and says a lot about relationships and forgiveness. You will be infuriated in some moments in life but hateful acts will always beget a hateful act back in your direction. Game stories exaggerate themes into a murder quest but you can still take them to heart. Break the cycle. Original is 10/10, this is 9/10.

The spoiler, more realized version of the final paragraph.

But what about the story, that's what you care about, that's why the user reviews are so awful, right? If I walked into a movie theater expecting to see a sequel to my favorite buddy comedy and instead saw a cynical action movie with scathing critiques, yeah I'd be shocked, it's not what I paid money for. Critics should acknowledge that something won't appeal to everyone and isn't what people expect. That grants you credibility, you shouldn't lie and say "yeah it's basically the same old thing as the first one, you'll love it". But it is also still your responsibility, if you're going to state your opinion, to judge a product on the merit of what it is and not the merit of a product that doesn't exist at all. Even as just a consumer, you'd be doing yourself a favor perhaps finding what you didn't know you wanted. The gist of it is that the game pulls two bait and switches on you, one within the opening sequence and the other half way through. "False advertising" some will claim. I'm about to spoil the twist of an entirely different game, Metal Gear Solid 2. You thought you were going to play as Solid Snake. You didn't play as Solid Snake at all. The infant version of the internet at the time went wild. Now, you do get to play as Ellie for 50% of the game but without Joel minus some great flashbacks that add a lot of context to their relationship. And then bait and switch number two, you play as Abby for 50% of the game, to much controversy a fairly well toned woman who effectively eliminates Joel from the plot. Playing another Ellie and Joel reach strategic location or retrieve something cross country story wouldn't have been bold. Would've fared well with fans maybe but it'd be by the numbers. Little quips, tension builds because Ellie always knew that Joel lied, breaking point followed by them hugging and making up like when you rude horse to the house in the first game. I guess you could learn forgiveness from that but it's not as effective and it's not an interesting story. There's a power to learning to forgive someone when you were never given the chance to express to them, there's a guilt. The Last of Us is the story of Ellie and Joel. Ellie spends the entirety of Part II attempting to forgive Joel. After the initial shock, I actually think Ellie has a fairly easy time understanding why Abby did what she did. She simply cannot get over the PTSD and guilt of not being able to help. Abby's story is interesting but the final scene is Ellie because Ellie is still the focus, Abby is supposed to exhibit the power of perspective, they're all villains from the right angle and from a neutral angle, they're both just deeply illogical people. I still prefer the original's because it's concise and nearly perfectly executed but The Last of Us Part II is a far more ambitious game in terms of themes and narrative structure. You are supposed to empathize with the characters in both games. But reading posts about The Last of Us over the years, one thing is clear. People will go to any level to justify what Joel did in The Last of Us. Empathizing does not mean agreeing. There is no agreeable character in Part II. That's the one great triumph Part II has over a classic game. And people don't like that triumph because we like biased stories with heroes.

Note: I do not care about the (stupid) politics by the developers of the game, nor the outrage of some fans. This review is about the game itself, and any spoilers are marked to keep you spoiler free.

After a 7 year wait, we finally have the sequel to 2013's The Last of Us. And it was worth the wait. Part II is bigger in scale with a longer story (avg. 25 hrs to complete), bigger levels to explore, and a bigger cast of characters that all play a role in the story. Environments are gorgeous thanks to the mastery of the hardware of the PS4, and I can't imagine how beautiful this looks on the PS4 Pro in 4K UHD. Forests are absolutely gorgeous to look at with detailed trees, leaves, bushes, plants, and god rays shining through it all as you explore the area. The music is the same as the first game--scored by the same composer--and it fits just as well here.

A highlight for me is that the combat system has a few neat additions to it. For instance, you can now kill someone if you stun him/her/it by first throwing a brick/glass jar. Running up to the enemy will allow you to "strike" and perform a one-hit kill. Ellie now permanently carries a knife with her, and this makes killing clickers much easier than in the first game. There is also a much-needed feature of being able to dodge an enemy's attack with L1. And, owing to you playing as a 19-year-old girl and not a man in his mid-50's, you generally move faster. Running, slipping through small gaps in the wall, etc. is quicker. The biggest and best parts of Part II are the bigger scale of the environments you play in, the new characters you meet, the improved combat system, and generally just more of what made the original game so great. A minor, but welcome, addition is that you can now craft a silencer for the pistol. It comes in handy, and it's nice to see small tweaks like this that improve the gameplay experience

However, not everything is perfect. There are a few aspects between the two games that I find to be better in the first game than in Part II. Part II is about pure, unrestrained hate based out of the loss of someone you love. The problem is that many people understand hatred, living for vengeance, and seeking revenge on someone is generally bad. There is a saying that "He who seeks revenge should dig two graves." That's where Part II's story slightly slips up. At no point in the story does anyone ever realize the mistake being made. There is no moment where someone realizes waking up, breathing, and walking with nothing but hate in his/her heart is bad and leads you on a path to doom. This creates a lack of emotional maturing by the end of the story--the characters are arguably the same at the end of the game as they are at the start. The first game showed Joel and Ellie's relationship change from the point where they meet to the final level where he saves Ellie in the hospital. The most we get, which I will admit is possibly exactly what I'm complaining about not having here, is the penultimate cutscene showing a conversation between Joel and Ellie, where Ellie says she will try to forgive him for not letting her die and have a cure made so that her life could have meant something. This implies that Ellie actually is learning about forgiveness, but this is after the final battle and Abby is long gone. I feel that, if there is a Part III, that this will only matter if the issue is dealt with in some way during the game then. As it is now, I feel like it may be too late for Ellie to have this revelation.

That said, the ending of the game does reveal that, after all of their revenge seeking, both Abby and Ellie end up losing everything (or close to it). Abby loses all of her friends, except her new friend Lily/Lev, while Ellie loses everything and faces the fate she says in the first game she is most afraid of--being alone. This is a fitting end for both characters as their entire motivations in this game are driven by hatred and revenge, but Abby does not show any forgiveness, and Ellie's possible forgiving of Abby is only hinted at in the penultimate cutscene. I do feel like a realization of the need for forgiveness would have helped instead of letting events play out like they do, but perhaps a sequel will rectify this. Perhaps not. Despite my two paragraphs on this matter, this is but a small issue with the story, but a notable one since I do feel it's lacking where emotional maturity is a major part of what makes the first game so great as it is the main reason it ends the way it does.

All in all, this game is like any great sequel in that it takes the original and expands upon it. It is better in terms of enjoyability, fun, graphical detail, improved gameplay, and it still tells a great story that keeps you invested. I've heard that a chief complaint for Part II is that the game is violent. I don't know much about this as it seems to have the same level of violence as the first game. The first game is about learning to love, and this game is about hate and revenge over the loss of someone you love with all your heart. This is shown by how Ellie has a major, if not complete, personality change from the first game. She is now an adult, and she has a lust for revenge. In a sense, this game shows what hatred does to a person--it corrupts. Even if the characters may not all learn about the dangers of living with hate in your heart, we (the players) can learn from this story so that we may not make the same mistakes these characters do.

Highlights

• Breathtakingly beautiful environments, especially a forest level I'm very fond of that takes place in the past.
• Neat upgrades to the combat system.
• Bigger levels than the first game which means more to explore.
• The game is long and fun.

Minor complaints

• Ellie has completely lost her cuteness. She is grown up, she doesn't care for how she looks, and she is driven with hate and rage. There is also a noticeable emphasis on her being a lesbian. I used to have a crush on her, but now I don't. In the end, however, I just want her to be happy.
• The story lacks the emotional growth that is the center of the original game. Instead, this game is more of a lesson in what not to do than a story showing people overcoming their flaws.