The Last of Us II - Gameplay is 7/10, story is 3/10. Visuals are 8/10, audio is 7/10. Overall...5? Hard to say.
Yeah so, I put this off for a while and guess I couldn't any longer? The story somehow gets worse the more I played it, and here's the crazy thing: If Abby didn't exist and/or wasn't playable...I dunno, I'd probably mark the story a lot higher. At least 6, which is notable since I almost gave it a 2/10. Ellie's portion was actually pretty good with some really good moments. Seeing Joel and Ellie being family like, the Dina stuff was cute, I surprisingly liked Jesse. Abby's stuff is manipulative, not at all interesting, and FUCKING STUPID! I wanted to like Lev, but wow. That kid is a fucking idiot and made everything worse for everyone. I was ok since Abby had nothing by the end but since it felt like the devs went 'hey Ellie has a really good ending and almost even a good message before she returns to the plot, SO LETS KILL IT FOR HER TOO!', I hate Lev for that too.
The worst part is it undoes so much of the first game's brilliance. You were allowed to make your view on the ending, but now suddenly you need to feel what Druckman says and realize it did a lot of bad. Hell, the story even copied some ideas (scrapped or completed) from the first game I found. The cannibals being the only group that chased after Joel and Ellie due to previous actions was great because no other group did and I know people went 'oh shit, all those guys we killed are now going to catch up with them'. In this game, no one even wants to really go after Joel before he dies so it's dumb.
It plays really well, but I just don't think it does enough new and didn't go all the way on a lot. The audio was good but I felt some tracks don't match the first games' which had a consistent, memorable and almost catchy beat.
I don't want a third TLOU unless it's a different cast or ignores this game. As for Naughty Dog...well at least their other franchises can't be tarnished I guess? Crash is well out of their hands (funnily enough I took Its About Time as my GOTY WAY over TLOU II but I hope we can see something), Jak they seemed smart to not do much with after the racing game, Uncharted ended really well and I'm surprised.