Chinwat Poorahong

If you love TLOU because of the heartwarming feeling that the game gives you, then please don't get involved with TLOU2. If you are looking for generic gameplay, fantastic graphic, and some spice in the storyline (but still a wired choice), then this might be the game for you. For those who don't want to read a full review, you can look at my short summary here (or the full summary below): TLOU gives you violence, lies, and heartwarming feeling that emerge through the main characters' relationship. TLOU2 gives you violence, lies, (questionable) moral dilemma trick, and sad and gloomy story. ===========SPOILER AHEAD=========== First, let's look at gameplay. I have to tell you guys that I didn't enjoy the gameplay of the first game. As you encounter the same enemy over and over again and your tactic revolved around sneak behind them and stealth kill, then re-establish your stealth again. For me, the overall experience of gameplay would be 4/10. ------- Graphic/Sound effect and ost/Voice actor ------- We don't have to talk about any of this topic because they are AWESOME (10/10). ------- Story summary/Climax/Take away ------- As you may see the game tries to get you to sympathize with both characters, shows you that the revenge only causes more damage to you and people around you, and forgiving can be a hard choice and even if you took the choice you still have to live with sorrow. Which might sound great for a game-takeaway right? Well, the thing that annoyed me is I don't understand why ND just ditch the plot that gives a heartwarming and good feeling (even though the world is cruel and violent) to the player in TLOU and changes it to a gloomy and sad storyline. I know this is subjective, but I did set my expectation for a whole different thing (Nevertheless, who am I to judge? It's a ND's game, not my game). Finally, the reason why I give this game a 5/10 game. As a story-driven game, the story itself should be the most important element. However, the ending, take-away, or whatever you might call it doesn't prove or justify any moral question. Because even if you (As Abby or Ellie) spare life of a villain to prove that there are some good deeds in the world (or in the character), it still doesn't hold the weight against the whole story. Let's think about it, we all know that every character in this game is evil right? They have to kill many other humans just to get what? Medicine, information, resources, you name it, or even just to cross the bridge. And they will likely continue their killing as the story goes by (or in TLOU3). Showing the player just one or two characters' revenge-forgiveness cycle just doesn't seem to make any sense in a game that you have to kill to proceed with the story. I'm pretty sure that all the people in the post-apocalypse world have their own "good" reason for their action and there will by Abby2, Abby3, Abby4, and many more. For me, to choose such a plot just to set up a cheap moral dilemma trick or make an ending seem awesome to some audience proves that the writer is very incompetent. He/She might get blind from how good he/she might think the story is, then overlooked or unable to realize the main gameplay or the whole world of the game. My brother said to me after we finished the game: What's the point of spending a 20-ish hour in this revenge plot as there are many more to come for revenge. Me: Drove off for trade-in TLOU2.