Right copying my post from the other thread, finally finished last night:
So finished the game last night, 27 hours roughly and whilst overall I enjoyed my time (and you can see my previous posts in this thread) I think it definitely lost momentum in the second half.
I rate the first game as a 9/10, gameplay was an 7.5-8 but the story was a 10. This time round I'd say the gameplay was a 9 (definite improvement in all areas and utterly brutal) and the story was a 6.5 so I'd probably say an 8/10 overall. It isn't warranting of the game of the generation tag (I'd argue GOW has that tag for me) but similarly it isn't warranting of the review bombing etc, if it had kept up the momentum from the first half of the game where the story was an 8.5 then I would have given it a higher score but the second half whilst alright didn't have the payoff to really warrant the length of time invested in that story arc.
To expand on this:
Positives:
- Gameplay was brutal and visceral really took it up a notch
- Fantastic presentation/graphics and audio seriously impressive.
- The first half of the story with Ellie was fantastic really bought into it as a revenge story and really felt anger and
- Some of the flashback sequences were truly memorable and touching
In-betweens:
- Abbies story arc and development was under baked, to really understand the initial killing I think it would have made sense to develop her as a character at the beginning and then lead up to that sequence, almost by having it in reverse I already hated her which made it much harder to buy into the second half of the game emotionally. Ellie killed all her friends and then she lets her go? I just think it needed more, the supporting cast felt incidental to the story rather than a key fabric of it.
- Abbies playstyle was distinctly more brutal and whilst I enjoyed the variety I felt like this section dragged on too long and I didn't get the payoff of having a connection with her character (possibly as a result of my above point) to really warrant its length, in fact the only time I felt truly bad for her was the last sequence with Ellie where she was beating her to hell and I just felt like it was too much at that point.
Negatives:
- The ending has no payoff, I get neither the emotional payoff of Ellies revenge nor the contentment of abbie surviving as I had never truly bought into her.
- I hate to say it but it felt unnecessarily dark? Like oppressively so, there was no feel good like the first. Don't get me wrong I get the point around Joel and Ellie having their demons and having to live with them but in an already depressing world the respite of having some 'feel good' is part of what makes 'The Last of Us' great. I think that magic was lost in this story.
- As a revenge story it was pretty by the book didn't have the nuance of the first.
So overall as I said not the 1-3/10's that people like to bang on about, just rather average 6-6.5/10 story wise with some really enjoyable gameplay, though as I said the first half of the story was brilliant I just wish it had kept it up.
It's an 8/10 game which could have been a genuine 10/10. I rate GOW higher than it this generation, prob my favourite game over this but I still had an enjoyable 27 hours overall so can't knock it.