[codynw]

So I finished the story and I kind of have the same feeling I did after watching The Last Jedi, so that's probably not a good thing. It was definitely a better sequel than Last Jedi, but it still fell kinda flat for me. I feel like the same story, just told slightly different would have been much better. A few random thoughts, major spoilers.

Spoiler!

Like, all of the spoilers. Don't read unless you're done the game or don't care about spoilers, for whatever reason.

Spoiler!

- First of all, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Naughty Dog are consistently one of the best in the business when it comes to how their games look, and this game raised the bar again.


- I hate the way they killed Joel. I get it, the (former) fireflies coming after him because of what happened in the first game made a lot of sense. But making you play as Abby, get rescued by Joel, then killing him without putting up a fight just sucked. The guy has been surviving in this world for ~25 years now, and both him and Tommy let their guard down like that around a group of heavily armed strangers? I don't buy it.


- The flashback scenes were fantastic, definitely some of my favourite parts of the game. Especially the one where they go to the museum for Ellie's birthday. The game needed more light moments like this, as it was really grim almost the entire time.



- I absolutely despised the way they ripped you out of the climax of Ellie's story and made you play as Abby, especially for as long as they did. I get that they wanted to show you who this character is, but I wish they'd handled it differently. Maybe a Left Behind like DLC down the road? Or kind of show you throughout the game rather than bringing the game to a complete stop and starting over again for like 8 hours. But I really had no interest in finding out who Abby was at that point in time and it really made me hate that part of the game. Making me fight Ellie while playing as Abby was easily the worst part of the game, I can't believe they thought that was a good idea.


- I really didn't like the scene with Tommy coming to the farmhouse and being a dick to Ellie about not finishing the job. That felt really out of character for Tommy and totally unnecessary to progressing the story. I feel like Ellie's PTSD should have just made her want to finish the job on her own, and that's when she goes to Tommy to see if they can find out where Abby went.


- I'm pretty okay with her not following through and killing Abby. Joel died in front of her and it broke her, she couldn't do that same thing to Lev, at least that's the way I saw it. He wasn't watching obviously, but he still would have had the adult who was taking care of him killed over revenge.


- I'm also really glad her last words to Joel weren't "I don't need your ####ing help" at the dance and that they showed that last conversation of her trying to repair the relationship with him.


- Overall, I'd say maybe an 7.5-8/10? Which for Naughty Dog is a pretty low score from me, cause they're easily one of my favourite developers. Hopefully whatever they do next tells a better story that I know they're capable of.