Even though The Last of Us Part II doesn’t need an introduction, it is a creation released on 19 July 2020, a continuation of the first game of this wonderful franchise that is so dear to the public (You can see the review for the first game here Review: The Last of Us Remastered | Mundo Gamer Community). The game was produced by the famous Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment exclusive for PS4 and now it’s possible to be played on PS5.

Naughty Dog is a north American developer of electronic games funded in 1984 and based in Santa Monica, California. This company is also responsible for other big names in the industry, such as Uncharted and the world-famous franchise Crash. I believe it is expendable to introduce the gigantic Japanese Sony.

A new story, linked to the old one

Introducing the narrative, Joel’s action in the first game will have a series of enormous consequences, years later, with Ellie already grown up and interacting with people of her age. First of all, it’s valid to remind that now both of them live in a very well-structured city, Jackson, a city that is populated, with dividing tasks, energy, and more. Both of them have to patrol, they go out to prevent the infector to get closer to the city and threaten the peace, besides collecting information about hostiles groups, do you remember the fireflies?

So, here they were extinct, but there are still other strong and quite threatening groups, the wolves (WLF – Washington Liberation Front), mainly formed by ex fireflies, they have extremely strong military equipment, besides having hounds that will give you a headache when they go looking for you, and here it’s where we find our main opponents.

There is also a grouping, Seraphites or Scars, a group that lives in the middle of woods, using archery, we can say they are more connected to nature, besides adoring their leader like she was some kind of messiah, we are literally going to find references to it, with posters and graffiti in the wall, “fell her love”.



Properly introduced, now we have spoilers (be careful), our problems are going to start at full speed, right at the beginning we are going to meet Abby, an arch enemy, or maybe not (you’ll understand later), a WLF member and ex fireflies this woman has an extreme force and will give us a lot of headaches during the story, that is because for some reason she is looking for Joel, to murder him, and she is going to do it.

At that moment something that I thought that I’d never experienced happened, the feeling of hate and a desire for revenge, I think I had never experienced something like that before, because, personally, Joel was, until then, my favorite main character, not only in The Last of Us but of all narrative games that I’d played.

Of course, the game will not give this revenge easily, we’ll be forced to understand the whole story, including Abby’s side, we’ll be taking turns playing with her and Ellie, owner of an enormous evolution. Besides that, we are going to have flashback moments with Joel, this happens just to calm us down a little.

A new Ellie

Be calm, I didn’t finish the story yet, but you need to understand that the fearless girl of the first game is now a woman, in the beginning, Ellie starts a relationship with Dina, a character that has some charisma and helps us a lot during our journey, besides having friendships with other characters (some have a tragic ending), so although having some romance cliches, it’s really good to see how the producers explored the human and sentimental side in a post- apocalyptical game.

In this context, our character will, of course, have immense hate and will go look for revenge (Does that remind you of anyone?), hunting one by one with endless anger, facing several enemies along the way, besides our infected friends we have a new bad surprise, a new type of zombie, Shamblers, that are a specie of Bloaters, but they explode and spread spores instead launching them on you, besides that, there is also another one, The Rat King, but it is a kind of a Boss that we’ll find only one time in the game. Anyway, our character will start to look like more Joel, but she has her peculiarities.

The other side

Now we are going to understand Abby’s side, and maybe you’ll stop hating her and start to have some sympathy, of course, we’ll always cheer for the main character, but Abby’s motivations are completely understood (it didn’t work for me, I still don’t like her), do you remember that I said before that Joel’s action on the first game will be directly connected with the second story?

You must remember that in the end, to save Ellie, we kill in cold blood a doctor in the surgery room, so, this man is Abby’s father, and also the motivation for her revenge against Joel, it’s like “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”, but, as we know, now Ellie wants to revenge Joel’s death and like this everyone will be blind and without a tooth, but this slaughtering will provide us a plausive narrative and a good journey, the game got harder and equally charming.

Some things are the same

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, with sensational mechanics and a huge success in the first game, some details don’t need to be fixed, and some are improved, but most of the mechanics and controls are extremely similar, the material collection and even the upgrade on ability tree (this one has a new layout but with the same function).

Besides that, characters, over time they got smarter, but what do you mean? I find it easier to survive in the second game in the combats against the infected ones than in the first game, that is because there are new characters’ abilities that allow us to have more fluid combat, but first, you need to master them.


 

Arts never disappoint

It’s clear that producers invested a lot of time and will in all aspects and points of the game, story, gameplay, and others, but for sure one of my favorite parts was the graphics that were delivered. That said, the game is entirely set for you to feel like you were inside it, the immersion is surreal when we put all the factors together, after all, it’s not easy to make the player feel the character’s feelings.

Places are bigger than in the first game, which had a more linear and unidirectional path, with some explorable places of course, but here these encounters are more common, in some point, Ellie has to use the city map and search in several points for this huge place to be able to progress in the story.

Another setting that draws a lot of attention is the one where we find the Scars, with a natural aspect, especially after we meet the brothers, Yara and Lev, who despite being just kids, master several abilities and will help us a lot in our journey when we play with Abby. In a specific part, we’ll find hidden bridges well-produced on the top of buildings where Scars move around, everything is hand-built with wood, using again the connection of this group with nature.

Final details

I believe that at this point we talk a little about everything, but I can’t forget to compliment the audio produced by Naughty Dog, the sound is extremely immersive. There is also the soundtrack of the game which is sensational and well-placed, that is, you can feel more tension, calm, and emotion in certain right moments in a more intense form because of it.

In this perspective, as a kind of conclusion, the game is very complex if we talk mainly about the plot, experiencing and feeling all the emotions of this story is something phenomenal, I don’t remember wanting so bad to play a game nonstop until the end as I felt at this game.

The Last of Us Part II is available for Playstation 4 and 5.