j f

Loved the first game. It was one of the all-time best. It was made great by the incredibly well crafted story with compelling character arcs. This sequel had none of that; NONE OF THAT. All of these reviewers writing about a great touchy-feely story with moral lessons must be children. In my opinion, it all came across as Hollywood readymade fluff made up of tired topes. I know that some people will summarily dismiss this review by calling me a trans/homophobe without countering any of the points I make. Ignore those people and really think about what I'm writing before you spend your hard earned money on this game. It was all sacrificed to push an LGBTQ agenda. Not a problem in itself, but it was done in a way that did nothing for the story. It would have taken five minutes to set the sexual orientation of the characters and then move on to writing a great story and characters. Instead, they completely destroyed the bleak and raw atmosphere of the first game. It also took away valuable time to create meaningful, and most of all, CONVINCING character arcs. You have to suspend a lot of disbelief in this version of a post apocalyptic world. It created a story that was disjointed at best. It made cut scenes feel excruciatingly long because of the framing of lesbian love and trans story lines injected into them with no real purpose to the story line or audience. There are loooong video sequences with many wasted minutes dedicated solely to: a lesbian kiss at a party between two of the main characters, cueing up the overused stereotype of the redneck that stirs up trouble because of it, a conversation between Joel and Ellie about the incident, a love scene between the two females in a basement pot garden, and then the happy couple living on a farm in the country raising an infant. Then there's all of the other small moments of dialogue incidental to this narrative. I don't want to buy a game to get prosthelytized to ad-nauseum. You could cut over a hour of video from the game with no sacrifice to the narrative. And then there's the rest of the cutscenes. There are a lot. If I wanted to watch a movie, that's what I would do; not play a game. There are long sections of play where you're just running through a dream sequence or reliving a memory. I guess some people might call this gameplay because you have to open a door or crouch through some meaningless action. It felt like they did this as an afterthought to give you "something" to do as a player. The farmhouse sequence is one of the worst. You get to walk around as part of the happy couple carrying a baby while herding goats into a barn. I found this to be a total waste of time. I found myself wishing I could skip many sections of the game and just "get on with it." Finally, they rewrote Joel into a faint shadow of what you experience in the first game. This is a fatal flaw. He was easily one of the best characters ever to grace the world of fiction. He is why the first game was such a success. Instead of vigilant, shrewd ,and wise; he's unaware, weak, and dumb. Then, he gets killed before the game really even gets started. He gets killed and replaced by protagonists that aren't written anywhere close to level that Joel was. Way to go developers. You just killed one of the best games ever. Even the wooden sky bridges running through Seattle fifty-stories high made the game feel like a fantasy adventure instead of the dark world of the first game. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Oh yeah, let's not forget the original had one of the best endings in video game history. This sequel gets the title for "worst ending".