Just finished this game last night for the first time. A damn shame about the 2nd half. The quality of gameplay and narrative just takes a massive nosedive after you start playing as Abby. No small open-world environments like in Ellie’s section, very linear uncreative sections that are long and drawn out. Extremely cringe-worthy side characters with teenage drama you don’t care about. WLF and Scars factions just become archetypical jokes and all that build-up to the final confrontation ends with 0 payoff.
The gameplay overall is barely evolved from the first game. You can now prone and hide in grass, but it’s pretty much the same. Not that’s a bad thing. I’ve always thought that Part 1’s gameplay was more a sum of its parts than any sort of unique gameplay – it’s mostly mechanics taken from other games and mashed up together. But what made Part 1 enjoyable was its atmosphere and narrative which was seamless with the gameplay. Part 2 doesn’t really do anything different apart from some slightly-improved action. Linear levels are very similar to Part 1 but when Ellie gets to ride on a her horse in this urban centre where you as the player can go where you want and complete objectives in any order was a welcome evolution. It’s just a shame that’s the only part that’s actually a massive improvement. Most boss battles are lame apart from 2 (Tommy and Ellie) which should have been used as a base for how they could vary up the gameplay. Tommy shooting at you with a rifle and luring infected to your location was great but lasts only 5 minutes. And the part where you chase him but he uses stealth and cunning to flank you. Stuff like that was great but extremely brief. Similarly, fighting Ellie was great and really changed up how you fight regular enemies. Sadly that lased another 5 mins too.
I remember watching the controversy last year and not really know what was true, false, overblown etc. I do think Part 2 does not deserve perfect scores – not even close. Ellie’s section is a 8.5/10 for me, and then Abby drops down to like 6/10. Of course, gotta give it to the Naughty Dog team for their insane level of attention to detail. The animations, graphics are just off the scale. But to be honest, I’d rather they had spent less time on all that, and more time on building on core gameplay and narrative. I don’t really think Neil Druckmann is a good story writer, he should stick to just game design.