I feel very conflicted about The Last of Us Part II, I don't know what score to even give without having some reservations. Should I commend it for making me feel a way that I have never felt before in a game, or should I condemn it for the exact same reason. The Last of US Part II is overbearingly miserable in a way that the first game wasn't. The original had glimmers of hope that are seldom found in its sequel. Pretty much the only ounce of joy in this game is the short farm sequence towards the end, which swiftly gets snuffed out when Tommy shows up.

The premise of the "cycle of violence"; violence leads to more violence, which leads to more violence, and so on and so forth; is one that I believe can be interesting in the medium of video games. However, The Last of Us Part II doesn't explore this as a game but as a movie. It feels that the intention is to make the player feel bad and guilty for all the lives that they brutally take away. However, this just comes off as antagonistic, because I didn't choose to go on a murderous revenge spree, Ellie did. The only choice given to the player is to march on, or stop playing the game that they may have spent $60+ on. I would like to reiterate though, that this concept could be interesting to explore in a more open-ended style of game than a hyper-linear one like The Last of Us. It would be cool if the player was met with the choice of breaking or continuing the cycle of violence, and each respective choice would lead to their own slew of benefits and consequences. Something that can only be done in a game, but that's not what we have here.

I hated to see the destruction of my favorite character from the first game, Ellie. Seeing them turn into a vengeful psychopath just sucked, they are wholly unlikable. I don't have a problem with a flawed protagonist, I liked Joel, flaws and all, but holy shit she just sucks so much in this game. Especially, when she threw away all the happiness she had towards the end to keep pursuing some twisted notion of avenging Joel, it just feels bad. I ended up liking Abby more than Ellie because of how utterly awful Ellie acts. I assume this was the intention, to make the player empathize with Joel's Killer, but it just doesn't feel good. Even in the end though, I found myself caring about these characters. The ending flashback made my eyes water because it showed the contrast of what Ellie was and what she is now, a husk of what once was.

I don't know how to process my feelings about this title. It is it actually a masterpiece and gamers are a bunch of dumbasses that can't appreciate art that makes them feel, for lack of a better term, uncomfortable. Or are the people who praise this game as a masterpiece are dumbasses because they believe this is some sort of masterclass in storytelling. I just don't know, and I don't know what to think about it. I can't for the life me reach a definitive conclusion in my opinions about this game. No other game has made me feel like this, and I can't tell if it's because it sucks or it's great. I just don't know, and it's so frustrating.

To switch gears, I really liked the gameplay and level design. Especially on higher difficulties, it's really fun to go in and out of stealth multiple times an encounter. I really felt like I was surviving against overwhelming odds by being clever and outsmarting the enemy. Particularly when the arena is multi-layered, opening up more approaches to the combat encounter. And to top it all off, the animations during combat are stellar and feel so life-like. Something interesting that may happen towards the end of a combat encounter is that the final enemy may stop attacking and beg for mercy. This leads to an interesting choice that the player can make, spare or kill.

They aren't one of your targets, they didn't kill Joel, they were simply an obstacle in the way of you, I mean Ellie, seeking revenge. Well, there is no choice, after a little while they just resume attacking you, even if you were aiming your gun point blank at their head. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't really matter, but I believe it illustrates how the cycle of violence premise could have been explored in this medium. It's simply a missed opportunity, or maybe Naughty Dog never wanted to explore that and simply wanted to make an experience that would make the player feel awful, so as to make a statement about the concept of the cycle of violence.

At the end of the day, I find The Last of Us Part II as a fascinating piece of media. Not because I love or hate it, but because it pulls on me from both sides of that spectrum. That feeling is one of kind and wholly unique to this game. I don’t know if I’ll ever find something similar, maybe some arthouse shit. But at the time being, The Last of Us Part II is one of a kind to me for better and for worse.