In overall I think its a great game. A natural improvement over the first one gameplay-wise. And for the most part I think the story delivers.
Rather than talk about what I like - which is most of the game - im gonna focus on the one thing I didnt like, which is just the ending - so, spoilers.
I didnt like the last 2 hours of the game tho, story-wise I mean. I know im probably in the minority here but I felt the story came to a natural conclusion before the small timeskip - and I feel everything that happened afterwards was unnecesary, the message the game conveys was already delivered, so it felt (imo) forced that you had to end it even worse. Like, the writers wanted to double down on something they didnt need to, the ending Ellie had was already good. I didnt need Ellie's life completely ruined and her ending with PTSD for life.
Revenge stories are tricky because at the end of the day the player has a team he is rooting for - and that is the main character we are playing that we've known since the first game and to which we already built a liking to, so if you are gonna make a whole revenge-story game but have the message be "revenge is bad, it destroys everyone, forgive" I feel you have to make it satisfying - your whole point cant be "Revenge is not supposed to be satisfying" - cause this is a game, not a movie. Ive invested too many hours for it not to be. and - personally - I didnt feel satisfied in the end, and I didnt like that I wasnt supposed to. Its anticlimatic for this medium.
Having all of that said, I havent replayed it since it released so it might be time to. Maybe ill feel diferent about the ending now.
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