
The last of us 2 review with storyline explained | Super scary, Action-packed Video game
The Last of Us Part II is a gripping, disturbing, emotionally exhausting story about the unpredictability of loss and making peace with your trauma.
It’s a milestone in gaming that makes the player not only question what they know about beloved characters but question their own attitudes towards violence and revenge.
This review is spoiler-free and the footage used will primarily consist of areas of the game shown prior to release. I will however be referring to the events of the first game, so if you haven’t played that, please keep that in mind.
Set some years after the original, “The Last of Us Part II” begins with Joel and Ellie’s relationship in a fractured state.

“There’s an obvious awkwardness in their conversation. The tension between them reveals to the player at once, that things haven’t been the same since
Ellie asked Joel what really happened that day at the hospital.”
The two have set up camp in Jackson, Wyoming, a more advanced settlement than we’ve previously seen in The Last of Us. This is society beginning to grow again. The threat from the infected isn’t over, but Joel and Ellie are no longer ignoring living for fear of dying.
Ellie has new relationships, responsibilities, and a role within the community. This is an older, more mature Ellie, even if Joel does still see her as the small girl with the flick knife that he walked across the country with.
“This glimpse into a potential future of normality doesn’t last long, however, as, after an attack on the camp, Ellie must go after Joel’s brother Tommy, who’s disappeared into the depths
of Seattle to find the perpetrators.”

The gameplay is similar to the original, however, an emphasis on stealth is achieved by filling encounters with far more enemies, and making them much harder to deal with.
Human opponents won’t walk in cardinal directions and ignore anything in their peripheral vision. They turn around, take sweeping looks across the landscape and the distance from which you can be spotted is far greater.
There’s also no magic invisibility even if you’re in cover. If an enemy could logically see you, they will and they’re unforgiving.
The infected gameplay is very similar to the original, which makes sense, I don’t like the idea of them introducing new flying infected or an infected with electric powers just for the sake of a sequel. Subsequently, encounters with them are far easier.

“As they should be, this is an Ellie that’s been sneaking up behind and killing Clickers for half of her life. And the decision to have the infected take a back seat to far more human enemies is an intentional one as it forces the player to confront the grim reality of their actions.”
The Last of Part II makes you feel like a monster. The people you are killing scream out in pain. They don’t drop to the ground lifeless as they’ve just been switched off, they grab at their wounds and they beg for their lives. Other members of their squad will call them by name.
They’ve just watched a friend be murdered in front of their eyes. It’s a difficult thing to sit through. It made me sneak or run through a lot of encounters because repeatedly watching the light go out of these people’s eyes as I killed them was not the Ellie I wanted to play as.
This guilt I was feeling is an evocation of one of the game’s themes: you can’t murder enough people to bring back those you’ve lost.
Ellie must be the one to break the cycle of violence and it’s something the character and by extension, the player struggles with. There were large parts of the game where I didn’t like Ellie. There’s a line between being someone that’s grown up in a kill-or-be-killed world and bloodlust, a line upon which the character balances throughout.

The theme of the endless cycle of violence is reiterated by some of the most upsetting rendered atrocities I’ve ever encountered in a game. It caused me to reflexively turn away from the screen multiple times. We have reached a level of graphical fidelity where you’re essentially watching photo-real murder, constantly for over 20 hours.
It made me feel extremely uncomfortable and this is completely intentional. The director “Neil Druckman” wants you to feel every agonizing moment of Ellie’s journey. It contextualizes her motivation as something that while initially, you’re completely behind, the more time spent murdering hundreds of people, you begin to wonder at what point the ends no longer justify the means. There are no heroes in The Last of Us Part II.
“Speaking of graphical fidelity, I’m confident in saying that The Last of Us Part II is one of, if not the single best-looking video games I’ve ever played.”

The environments feel both sprawling and natural but also handcrafted by a team of artists going over every misplaced brick. Downtown Seattle feels like it goes on for miles.
The performances of Ashley Johnson, Troy Baker, and Laura Bailey are unparalleled. Johnson in particular deserves immense praise for carrying the emotional complexity of Ellie and depicting trauma with a subtlety rarely if ever, found in video games.
If “the look” from the end of The Last of Us was a benchmark for silent storytelling in cinematic games, then “Naughty Dog” meets and obliterates that benchmark in every scene. It is an unfathomably beautiful game.
This is highlighted in the game’s more open areas. In a cue taken from Uncharted: Lost Legacy, The Last of Us Part II features larger, mini-open worlds that the player can explore at certain points of the story. Whereas in the original, some shops may have been open for a bit of light discovery or perhaps to hide a collectible.

The Last of Us Part II allows for hours of exploration of a downtown Seattle retaken by nature. While plenty of these explorable areas are still used to hide the game’s comically large number of collectibles, the real discovery is in the character moments they reveal. The writing in the Last of Us Part II is exceptional. “Neil Druckman” and “Halley Gross” have crafted a story that is engaging, moving, and emotionally draining. This is not a feel-good game.
I believe that there will be people that hate the story of The Last of Us Part II. And I think it hinges on how you feel about the closing moments of the original. The Last of Us Part II doesn’t only provide more context to the ending of its predecessor, it actively makes it a better narrative. The question of “what was Ellie thinking?” hangs over the game throughout and it reinforces another of the game’s themes: making your life mean something in an impossible situation.

“There is a far, far longer conversation to be had about some of the narrative choices in The Last of Us Part II once everyone’s had a chance to play it, but as someone that holds the original game in such high esteem that I consider it one of my favorite games I’ve ever played, I think they’ve handled the next chapter in Joel and Ellie’s story superbly.”
The interpersonal dialogue is also stellar. Ellie coming to terms with her feelings for Dina is handled maturely and realistically, that feeling of loving someone, but not being sure if you’re good enough for them is played perfectly.
This is a game that spends a lot of its time with an entirely new cast aside from Ellie and I think they’re all tremendous additions. Which was an absolute necessity because if you didn’t care for these people then it’d be impossible to justify the horror that Ellie’s committing- and even then, it’s hard to stomach.
It’s not a perfect game, I think it’s slightly too long, or rather, the time spent isn’t divided in the most effective way. At just over 20 hours, it clocks in around six hours longer than the original. Towards the climax, I felt the narrative slows to a pace where It felt plodding rather than intentionally subtle, only for things to come together rapidly and rush towards the finish line.
It feels like the last three hours’ worth of narrative could have occupied six hours’ worth of playtime and the slower moments with fairly standard encounters could have been lost.

“But even then, I’m conflicted, because The Last of Us was never about the destination or even the journey itself, it’s a game about the relationships that are forged along the way.”
It’s the notes that you pick up discarded on bedside tables. It’s the relics of the world before infection. That’s what makes The Last of Us special. And The Last of Us Part II is full of it.
I’ve no doubt that my playtime will be longer than most as I looked through every room I could, read every piece of exposition, and triggered every optional conversation because I find that world so immensely interesting and the things that Part II adds to it are both unexpected and fascinating. It explores how different ideologies would attempt to rebuild the world.
It explores which prejudices are nurtured and which are alien to those who’ve only known the time after the infection. Often, the thing you find at the end of your journey is either disappointing or not what you expected. That hope that Ellie lost after the conclusion of the first game haunts her journey in Part II.

“It’s a strange feeling, waiting seven years for something and then for it to be over in a couple of days. An experience that, thematically was far more appropriate than I could have possibly imagined.”
At the end of The Last of Us Part II, I didn’t feel happy. It was more of a relief mixed with reflection. I had just played a game that’ll be lauded for decades to come. I’d seen the next part of a story that I first encountered in what felt like a different world.
But it’s because of that change to the world that The Last of Us Part II hit me so hard. It’s genuinely difficult to play and not be reminded of the anxiety-producing events currently happening in our real world.
It’s not escapism to be greeted by horrific images of violence every day and then turn on your PlayStation to see it rendered in what is arguably the console’s aesthetic high point. I watched the entire credits silently, thinking about where the characters are at the end of the game and wondering if there was any other way it could have gone.
Much like at the end of The Last of Us, there’s no answer. This is still life after the end of the world. It’s unfair. It’s exhausting.
The Last of Us Part II is a game that I believe everyone with the ability to play must do so as a priority.
However, it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s emotionally draining, gruesome and it’ll have you thinking about it for days if not weeks to come.
It’s one of the most impactful games I’ve ever played. The gameplay is a refined, difficult survival horror that is less about the mechanics and more about how they’re used in the context of who you’re attacking. The story is one that I only stopped delving into to sleep, and even when I did, my quiet moments were filled with thoughts about Ellie’s journey.


“I’m fascinated by the conversations this game is going to inspire. I mainly want to know if others feel as moved by it as I do. Or how you could play that game and not be? Games like The Last of Us Part II are exactly why I love this art form. It’s heartbreaking. It’s scarring. It’s touching. It’s a masterpiece.”

