I have a complicated relationship with The Last of Us Part II. I genuinely admire its execution, but I have major issues with its foundation. It’s like a beautifully crafted castle built on cracked stone: breathtaking from a distance, but fragile once you examine the base. The structure holds, but only if you don’t look too closely.

The story delivers a string of expertly timed emotional gut-punches. Through its clever use of shifting perspectives, it forces you to confront your own proximity bias: the more you know a character, the more their death will hurt, and conversely, the less you know someone, the easier it is to justify killing them. It forces you to reckon with the consequences of Joel’s “original sin” at the end of Part I, even if you thought he made the right choice under the circumstances. It refuses to let you write it off as a “well, it was complicated” moment. Instead, it insists: people died. Worlds crumbled. Revenge devoured everyone. In that sense, Part II is bold, unflinching storytelling. You could argue it’s stronger than Part I, but it inherits some of the same flaws, including one rooted deep in the original game's narrative.

That’s because Joel’s “original sin” was flawed from the start. His decision in Part I only happens because of a forced, pseudoscientific plot device that somehow the Fireflies need to remove Ellie’s entire brain to develop a cure. It’s medically implausible, and the more Part II reminds you of that moment, the more it undercuts the moral weight of everything that follows. You’re being pulled into a profound emotional reckoning over something that never felt fully believable in the first place. That’s one of the major cracks in the stone beneath the metaphorical castle.

But the cracks don’t end there as the story also takes liberties with its pre-established characters. Right from the opening scene, something felt off. Joel recounts the events of the Firefly hospital to his brother, not under duress, not backed into a corner, just... opens up. Is this the same Joel who, in Part I, would shut down Ellie aggressively for even asking about his past? Now he’s suddenly confessional? And when the game follows up with a warm, sentimental moment between Joel and Ellie, it’s clear: this isn’t the same cold, hardened Joel I hated playing as in Part I, but still respected for how well he was written, and for the boldness of portraying his love for Ellie as controlling, selfish and possessive, rather than the more clichéd fatherly devotion we see in Part II. It feels like Joel was retconned to serve the plot, not to continue his arc.

The same goes for Ellie. In Part I, she was empathetic, morally grounded, and visibly shaken by violence. Even when she killed, she remained deeply human, haunted by the cost of survival. In Part II, at the start of the story (and before any fresh emotional trauma), she already comes across as cold, hardened and eerily comfortable with killing. Some argue that’s because the past four years were rough, that she grew up in a brutal world and had to do terrible things. But these same defenders also claim Joel softened during those years because his life with Ellie was peaceful. So… which was it? Was their life peaceful or brutal? The flashback scenes don’t do much to resolve the contradiction, and it feels like the backstory becomes whatever the plot needs it to be to justify the character arcs. You can choose to fill in the blanks with your own assumptions, but in a character-driven story like The Last of Us, emotional scaffolding is everything. It doesn’t work to skip the in-between and say, “Well, people change.” That’s not character development. That’s narrative convenience.

There are similar emotional leaps in how both Ellie and Abby make their choices between revenge and forgiveness, mercy and violence. Their decisions are often inconsistent, something that can feel human in real life, but inevitably comes off as unearned in fiction unless properly grounded in a character’s moral arc. Oddly enough, the character who moved me most was Yara, despite her limited screen time. That’s both a compliment and a critique, highlighting the price of making the main characters morally grey. You may find yourself reflecting on their actions a lot while struggling to relate with them or root for them, which keeps you intellectually engaged but emotionally less invested in their story.

That said, the game truly shines outside of its narrative. Cinematic direction is excellent, and the performances across the board are outstanding. Gameplay feels like a natural evolution of Part I: it retains the same loot-fight-cutscene loop, but expands on it with larger environments to explore, more hidden secrets, additional perks and a wider array of craftable items. Combat is arguably even more engaging than in the first game, with solid AI and enemy conversations that give even minor characters personality, to the point where, ironically, I found myself looking for ways to avoid combat and sneak past without killing anyone, even if my character didn’t share that restraint. Visually, the game is just as impressive as Part I was, I didn’t notice a difference.

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Now, having played both Part I and Part II, I’ll close with a few thoughts on The Last of Us as a whole. I see it as an impactful story - flawed, at times emotionally manipulative, and built around a textbook false dilemma, yet still powerful enough that many gamers call it their favorite narrative.

But that depends heavily on your mindset. History shows that in times of crisis (whether through war or plague) human communities set aside their differences to unite against a common threat, driven by a natural instinct for species preservation. TLoU, by contrast, offers a deeply disillusioned vision of humanity that aligns with a certain fashionable nihilism in mainstream dystopian fiction: a world where Fireflies fight FEDRA, WLFs battle Seraphites, and the real enemy (the infected) are little more than background noise. Human life holds little value, and empathy is the exception, not the rule. The story reflects on the wrongness of violence and upholds the values of mercy, compassion and letting go, yet it takes for granted that people will default to violence in a crisis that has already pushed humanity to the brink of extinction.

If you already expect the worst of human nature, that worldview may ring true, but if you don’t, it can feel just as contrived as any plot twist the game throws at you. For me, the entire story walks a fine line with my suspension of disbelief - and maybe I’m better off that way.

Even so, I still consider The Last of Us a worthwhile experience thanks to its strengths I’ve outlined above. That breathtaking castle I mentioned is worth visiting, so long as you tread lightly and accept that some of its beauty rests on unstable ground that may give way under your feet when you least expect it.