edit: sooooo. recently learned the creator of this game is a massive zionist. apparently he created this game to mimic the genocide of palestinians and further push the narrative of there being a conflict between "Israel" and Palestine. I wanted to add this to the beginning of my older review because it's important that people get to know this kind of information.

This is a good game. It asks a lot of its players and offers an even more brutal version of the world than Part I. There's a lot of parts of the story that I think are missing something, but it's hard to put my finger on exactly what that is. It's really hard to say I enjoyed this game because like. It's fucked up. But also I think there's a lot of great stuff in here that people would have to be really silly to ignore or put down.

Every main character is compelling and even side characters, my personal standouts being Nora and Jesse, and Yara as well though I'm not sure if she's considered a main or secondary character, have their stories shown to us without any kind of heavy-handed narration forcing the audience to feel for them. All of the characters feel like real people, even in their cruelty, and especially in their grief. I'm not sure I've ever played or watched another game that feels as much like a funeral as this one, and it's a good thing. The audience is mourning Joel along with Ellie and also seeing Abby atone for more than just his murder. We see both protagonists lose themselves in vengeance in reverse parallel which mirrors the first game wonderfully.

One problem I have: This mirror of the first game sometimes feels forced. Abby cannot be Joel and she shouldn't have to be for us to sympathize with her. I think this was really my biggest problem with her writing because I really desperately wanted her to get to be her own character rather than having such direct and blatant ties to Joel as a character. For the record, I really like Abby actually and I think that if so much of her world with the WLF wasn't made to mirror Joel and Ellie's lives then her story would feel less like it was being forced to fit into another character's mold.

Her relationship with Lev is one of the best parts of the game and Ellie's relationship with Dina is one of them, too. Again, they parallel each other in the reverse, with Lev and Abby becoming close like family and Ellie and Dina's straining under the weight of bitter grief and the pain that comes with it, that poisons and aches. Ellie really shows how much she learned from Joel for better or for worse and Abby tries to reconnect with the things her father wanted her to value, that she forgot in favor of anger.

The story just makes sense. You can be frustrated by the character choices as much as you want, I know there were moments where I was thinking NO DOOOON'T, but that doesn't mean that the choices are out of character. Sometimes the wrong choice is the right one as far as what a person would truly do.

I'm feeling a bit stuck on how to score this game and I have a feeling that I'm going to switch back and forth on it over time, but I'd prefer to take what I enjoyed from it with me and leave my issues with the game here. I didn't like that the method of Joel's death felt a bit like it was put in the game for shock value, but at the same time I have no issue with his death being a part of the story. IT SUCKS but it doesn't happen to be shocking.

And it matters through to the end—in every reminder of his selfishness, in each and every time Ellie misses him, in how much Tommy becomes like him in his absence, in J.J.'s presence, and in every doodled moth. This story has always been Ellie's and her pain is our pain. I think that's really the point.