The Last of Us Part II (2020, Playstation 4) Review

A REVIEW BEST SERVED COLD

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If I learned anything during my years as a cinephile, it is that you must respect your audience’s time. As a game development studio, Naughty Dog borrows heavily from cinema to draw players in—and should therefore be held to the same standard of discipline. Before going any further, I want to make one thing clear: The Last of Us Part II is far too long.

This flaw bleeds into nearly every aspect of the experience, save for the audiovisual presentation, which remains extraordinary—perhaps even timeless.

The first game, The Last of Us (2013), distilled an entire year of trauma and survival into a taut, exquisitely paced 13–16 hour journey. By contrast, the bulk of Part II unfolds over only three in-game days, stretched into a 30–35 hour ordeal. What should feel like a tightening spiral instead becomes a slog. By the end, I felt drained, disconnected, and relieved—not moved—to finally be finished.

The game is split by a deep, almost unbridgeable divide. On one side is the gameplay: refined stealth and combat animated with near-cutscene fidelity, offering tense, satisfying encounters. On the other is the story: structurally incoherent, thematically muddled, and aggressively overwritten—though presented with facial animation and acting on a level never before seen in the medium. No wonder the experience feels so internally conflicted.

A PATCHWORK STORY

The story’s central problem is not its ambition, but its excess. At every turn, I sense a desperate urge to explain—to underline, reinforce, and restate its themes. When the narrative hits resistance, nothing is cut. Instead, more is added: another flashback, another perspective shift, a romantic subplot, a dream sequence. The result is a constantly interrupted flow, where the chain of cause and effect becomes increasingly difficult to reconstruct.

Without spoiling specifics, the story opens in the snowy settlement of Jackson, four years after the events of the first game. Ellie lives a relatively peaceful life, strained only by an unresolved rift with Joel and the stirrings of a romance with Dina. Then, abruptly, tragedy strikes. Ellie sets out for Seattle on a three-day quest for revenge—and after more than a dozen hours, the game rewinds to replay those same days from a different character’s perspective.

This is a revenge tale as old as scripture, presented as though it offers radical new insight. It does not. The impression I’m left with is that Naughty Dog’s reputation for strong writing granted its storytellers unchecked authority. If a five-minute scene is desired, the world bends to accommodate it—regardless of pacing or necessity.

Not all of this is poorly done. Every scene is immaculately acted and animated, and a handful are genuinely affecting. But many feel superfluous in hindsight, and some—particularly the romantic subplots—are not only unnecessary, but actively detrimental to the tone.

The worst misstep arrives halfway through: a ten-hour narrative detour introduced at precisely the wrong moment, designed to reframe a single character. It fails. The newly introduced cast is bland and interchangeable, their relationships inert. The entire sequel contains one moment of raw, undeniable power—and it occurs in the prologue.

This detour also marks the point where the game’s themes are no longer explored, but imposed. The message—violence begets violence, hatred breeds hatred—is hammered home with such insistence that it becomes hollow. These are ancient truths, not daring revelations.

Worse still, the story applies its moral logic inconsistently. Violence is condemned in one moment, excused in another, depending on who commits it and why. The result is a narrative that neither fully embraces nihilism nor meaningfully interrogates it. One is left wondering why this story needed to be told at all—especially at such bloated length.

STEALTH, COMBAT, WORLD - A COMPLETE PACKAGE

Moment-to-moment gameplay is exceptional. New mechanics like prone movement and evasive dodging expand the tactical palette, and the large environments allow for creative, fluid approaches. Slipping in and out of cover, watching enemies panic and coordinate, is thrilling.

The Infected introduce new variants that heighten tension, and their designs subtly mirror the playable characters—monstrous reflections of inner impulses, and somewhat reminiscent of their physical appearances. These encounters are terrifying and memorable.

But once the action subsides, the sheer scale of the environments becomes burdensome. Resource scavenging drags on, repeated across vast areas with minimal variation. What should feel like escalation instead feels cyclical. If this is meant to depict psychological descent, it unfolds at a pace so sluggish it barely registers.

That said, the environmental storytelling remains strong. Seattle is hauntingly beautiful in decay—roots tearing through asphalt, nature reclaiming abandoned structures. Optional notes and recordings tell intimate, tragic stories that often prove more compelling than the main plot itself.

The irony is brutal: the gameplay systems and world-building are excellent, but they are shackled to a story that actively undermines them. Instead of supporting one another, narrative and gameplay exist in opposition.

By the end, the contradiction is impossible to ignore. You are asked to condemn violence after committing hundreds of killings. You are asked to empathize after being emotionally bludgeoned into submission. Gameplay and cinematics tell incompatible stories.

I admire much of what this game achieves: its atmosphere, its tension, its technical mastery. I despise how relentlessly it lectures, how little trust it places in the player’s capacity for reflection, and how it dismantles beloved characters in service of a message it cannot articulate coherently.

I appreciate that the game sparked debate—something rare and valuable. But I resent the self-importance with which it does so. Love is impossible here. So is indifference. The experience oscillates endlessly between admiration and frustration, never attempting to reconcile the two.

And that, ultimately, is what I find hardest to forgive.