SPOILER FREE REVIEW: I just finished #TheLastofUsPartII . I have a lot of thoughts, and very few of them will feel nice to get off my chest. I will preface this with the statement that I went into TLOU II with high hopes. Here's how that turned out for me:

Keep in mind this review is very brief and is written in one take. It's optimized the best it can be with Twitter's character limit, and it only encapsulates the points that I believe are the most important.

The Last of Us Part II does very little to make use of the momentum given to it by its predecessor. It blatantly stagnates in almost all areas of gameplay. The stealth mechanics from part one are barely expanded upon very far, if in many cases at all.

Aside from a few minor tweaks and optimizations to stealth mechanics, ones that are commonplace in stealth games and have been for decades - the gameplay still only exists as filler to take the story from A to B. And although combat is more fluid, it feels hollow and pointless.

The writing is perhaps the most frustrating thing in TLOU part II. Systematically, it works. It's fundamentally sound. Everything flows in a way that makes total sense. But it's constantly presented to you in a manner where it obviously wants you to believe it's more than it is.

"The illusion of choice" is a concept you will run into quite often in TLOU2. The game loves to bombard you with options/scenarios where it would like you to believe you have more of a say than you do. Then immediately present the consequences of the choice you did not make.

While structurally the writing is solid, it's very on the nose about how proud of itself it is. I will say that without a doubt, TLOUII is probably the single most pretentious video game I've ever played. Which would be fine, if it actually had meat on the proverbial bone.

The highest note is undoubtedly the visual presentation, art direction, and audio engineering. TLOUII is perhaps the best looking/sounding game on the PS4, and coming to the end of the console's life-cycle, I would say that's rather high praise.

Everything in the visual department is nothing short of seamless. Impressive to say the least, everything in TLOUII seems completely natural, nowhere in the game does it feel like assets are being reused or things don't make sense to be there.

It makes perfect use of it's visual presentation to show you everything it wants to at every opportune moment. And it's nothing short of gorgeous. Those who worked on the visuals and art have made perhaps the prettiest game on any console to date.

The spectacular soundtrack is wonderfully inspiring. The audio is mixed perfectly, and the voice acting performances are nothing short of superb. This is perhaps the only department where Naughty Dog has made noticeable leaps and bounds from it's predecessor 7 years prior.

If you are someone who would enjoy simply turning your brain off and being smothered by an atmosphere, then TLOU2 might be the game for you. If you are, however, critical of finer details, and attracted to the idea of fun gameplay - TLOU2 might bore and frustrate you to no end.

Visual/Art/Audio: 9.5/10
Story: 6/10
Gameplay 4/10

Overall 6/10

I'm inclined to say that TLOU2 disappointed me. However, it more or less matched my expectations. Which in of itself, is rather disappointing. I had hope that TLOU2 would negate my suppositions. If you're on the fence with TLOU2, I recommend doing something else with your time.