A game that is swallowed up by the same ambition that makes it, in spite of its flaws, one of the most striking experiences to be had in video games in quite a long time.

It's incredibly strange to say that the best part of a Naughty Dog game is the combat and encounter design, but they were able to craft almost a Phantom Pain-lite experience here with larger, more intricate level design and a far deeper set of options for the player during combat than its predecessor had. The AI is also, thankfully, an enormous step up from that game, creating an incredible tension in every combat encounter with human enemies.

With the moment-to-moment gameplay being such a delight, it is all the more of a shame that the second half of the story squanders almost all of the momentum that the writers painstakingly built up in the first twelve hours or so. Naughty Dog takes some big swings structurally here, and while the major change that takes place around midway through the story is initially effective, the game's pacing never really recovers from there despite the story it's telling still being generally very well told. It's a story where almost all of the elements are fundamentally at least good, but the structure choices does those moments an enormous disservice.

In spite of these structural and story-telling gripes the game is a triumph in so many areas, from sound design and another sensational score by the returning Gustavo Santaolalla, to just how stunning a visual showpiece it is. It's a game who's issues keep it from being up there with the all time greats, but still easily one of the better games of this generation and a worthy sequel to the original, and a game I'm almost certainly going to play again almost immediately.