p excited despite the early buzz being a bit MIXED, I've been starving for another single player game to get into. Haven't really played one since Outer Worlds last year
As far as "play it for the story" type games, this one is a step above most as far as gameplay goes imo. The stealth mechanics are nothing super original but everything FEELS p immersive, they did a good job with the animations especially
unfortunately the Joel death was spoiled for me thanks to the leaks :( At least it happened early in the game, although I still know one other thing to come from those leaks as well. BRUTAL scene obv, hope that actually leads to something other than just being for shock value
vry curious why Abby is playable (unless it's just for that first part? Which would still be odd).
Def makes me more intrigued with where they're going with all this, seems like it's gotta be more than just a basic revenge plot?
still kinda wait-and-see with the plot. Goddamn those facial animations are great though, every character's reactions looks/feels so real
man this game just went on and on. First it seemed the natural endpoint was hit when Abby comes into the theatre, then we go and replay the entire game as her. THEN after we do actually get their confrontation, we end up getting a second sub-plot of Ellie hunting down Abby. Some of it worked, but it was definitely a...unique story structure
After being a bit leery after it became clear that they were gonna devote a ton of time to Abby, I did kinda like the story choice by the end. It put Ellie's unyielding quest for revenge in a whole different light, especially when Abby finds the aquarium aftermath at the end. Still not sure we needed to spend QUITE so much time playing Abby to get that point across but w/e
I think if anything my main complaint with the game would be how PADDED it felt a lot of the time, specifically with some of the fetch quests. e.g. the one where you go to find medical supplies for Mel's arm went on for AGES, did we really need to spend hours devoted to such a minor plot point? By the end I almost started to forget what the objective even was. It's funny that they were like "we need these supplies in two hours or she might DIE!" when honestly the quest might've taken longer than that in-game
As for the ending...eh. I honestly would've been fine with Ellie forgiving Abby and going with her to the Fireflies (I thought for a sec this might happen after she cuts her down), but maybe that would've been too 'neat'. idk, there were some interesting themes but the ending itself just felt kinda flat to me
overall I'd say it was a solid follow-up. Not as good as the first but I'm not disappointed. Had enough new story ideas/gameplay mechanics to make it feel worthwhile
I do think they could've done a better job giving a REASON story-wise for the repetitive gameplay rather than so many arbitrary fetch quests. But even though the gameplay was repetitive I thought it was extremely fun to play, and this is coming from someone who's typically not huge into stealth OR survival horror games. It took everything good about the first and improved on it I think. There was enough progression that it kept the core gameplay fresh enough for me
Spoiler
+
the hunting pistol, flamethrower, and much later the silenced SMG were all really fun weapon additions this time around
