Zander Fong

Ellie was the shining light of the first game. Her relationship with Joel, her bubbly personality, the high moments we get with her between all the low moments makes the game feel well paced and is what gives the ending the impact it has. The second game is nothing more than torture porn for the sake of torture porn. Ellie's character is completely ruined; she becomes an uncaring murderous monster worse than Joel ever was. Every "twist" is obvious at least 5 minutes out, and since the last half the game is a recollection of the first half of the game from another perspective, there's essentially no new information for a good portion of the game. This game genuinely would have been so much better if it was just focused on Abby. Aside from the story, the gameplay is just bad. You can tell they took a lot of pacing inspiration from Uncharted, which is a game where you are regularly expected to stop and look around, since the story often centers around the environment rather than the people. This formula doesn't really work for tlou, since it's hard to stop and look around in a game that has you constantly looking over your shoulder. The game just becomes really long stints of no action or story, followed by overwhelming combat scenarios, followed by mediocre cutscenes full of nothing but gloom and misery. The story itself happens so infrequently compared to gameplay that it makes it a sludge to get through, and without Ellie's jokes or the playful banter between her and Joel like in the first game, most of the gameplay is done in brooding silence from the characters. There are just so few redeeming qualities in this game that I genuinely don't even think it was worth playing for the experience, or even just out of respect of the first game. Just, do yourself a favor and watch the cutscenes on youtube if you must. Don't bother touching this game.