i first got this game when part 2 came out in hopes i could get into something popular and i just couldnt. i put it down until recently. after i played the walking dead i decided i was really into survival horror so that kept me going but i wasnt too interested throughout the whole thing. if this game wasnt as popular as it was ill just say i dont think i wouldve had half the motivation i had while playing this game. i kept getting frustrated and wanting to quit but i kept telling myself "its popular, just finish it, just trust it" as a note im saying this about myself not the general audience of people who played it. some people do prefer this game to the second. but, for me, i would get frustrated a lot. its not necessarily the difficulty alone but the difficulty + me feeling like there was a lack of objective at times. i know theres hoards of zombies in this badly lit area but howd they even get there? why are there so many? why am i fighting for my life just to get out of this single room? i know what the main objective was but i think this game struggled with putting emotions into plot points. everything felt matter-of-fact with not much dialogue even.
i think at a point they tried their absolute best to make ellie and joel have some development, but it fell flat as it all was too congested in one part and not spread out well despite them being together the whole game.
okay now another complaint i had were the lack of other in depth characters. we have tess, sam, henry and probably a few others but no one felt important at all. maybe joels brother, but thats it. we barely even got to know anything about joels own daughter. they did something cool with sam and henry and i liked it but again, just not enough.
when i finished this game i cant even say i had a lot going on in my mind. i thought the ending was good but i wasnt crying and didnt have much to say/ wanna talk about with people who finished it as well. i didnt even really wanna play the dlc that came with it (which i did end up playing after part 2) but i just wanted to move onto part 2 and be done with it. idk

i guess in retrospect i like it. i have to give it that but i do have to say i liked it about 10x more after playing part 2. back when i was playing it i felt like it was way too much combat for little story. and it all felt fruitless. again i know there was an objective, but i didnt feel like i cared enough. i wish there were plot points other than them moving to new locations. anyways im glad i played it altho i almost dropped it like 5 times rage quit abt 20 times and forced myself thru it for over half the game. in the end it was very worth it to play part 2 which is in my top 5 games now!