Owen Byron

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This is a game that really tried to be impactful and meaningful with its characters and message. It absolutely failed. This is what it boils down to: "Violence is bad". WAIT CALM DOWN! I know how shocking that may be to you all, but, as a surprise to no one, everyone gets that. However, making a harrowing and unenjoyable experience where you force yourself through it in the hopes that it will magically become good just doesn't do it. This game had serious potential, and it could have even made the cardboard characters likeable (at least partially) just by flipping the narrative order. But even then, that wouldn't redeem it. Let's get down to some main positives and negatives. The graphics are beautiful. The sound design is great. Some elements of the story were really interesting, although mostly the parts you discover retroactively such as the history of certain factions as you travel through areas and pick up the bits of lore. Frankly, that's where my list of positives end. Character facial animations outside of cutscenes were... Questionable (Ellie looked as though she was smelling raw sewage during a heatwave constantly). The characters and how they are portrayed is by far the worst part of the story. The main love interest I just didn't really like as a character. She was unfunny and overall flat. They know how to make good female characters, but seems like they kinda forgot in this game. Otherwise the other characters besides the player controlled ones proved to be the most interesting and in depth ones who I would have loved more involvement from. I did like that they included characters outside of the usual choices, but that doesn't help much when a dish washing sponge has more depth. Being a sequel, and contrasting the characters transitions into the second games, they just weren't the same. Joel as a brash and outspoken, hardened man with a strong sense of care and attachment became an awkward old man. Ellie lost a lot of her smarts and nerve, but wasn't that bad overall. The story and pacing, well, it existed. The overall framework for the story, although generic, had the premise of being engaging enough. But the bits that should have had focus you barely had time to process, the rest was a 24 hour loop of nails on a chalkboard. Despite people praising the gameplay, I was rather disappointed by it. It's the same as the first game, but somewhat regressive. Rather than needing to be terrified of clickers and carefully managing resources, even on the hardest difficulty for everything running around and stabbing things with your unbreakable knife made enemies trivial. The ai at times could be dangerous and challenging. Other times they'd be smarter after you blew their head off. The game tried really hard to make the player reconsider their (game scripted mandatory) actions and see how the bad could be good, but I found myself lacking the capacity for sympathy when it wanted us to feel bad because of one particular concept (e.g. pregnancy) or contextual information (dogs have owners and even trained attack dogs are treated like normal dogs when not working, who'd have thought?) despite disregarding it any other time. We know that it isn't a linear concept of bad and good. Even if games commonly delineate the two, it's not something of incomprehensible complexity. Overall, The Last of Us Part 2 was a bitter experience that left me, alongside many others, thoroughly disappointed.