The Last of Us Part II is a messy game. let me go through the other stuff first. The gameplay is very serviceable, it gets the job done. I like the new dodge mechanic and the new enemies are a nice gameplay twist. the music from what i remember was serviceable, couldn't really remember much though. Time to stop dancing around the subject the story is the most iffy part of this game. I'm just gonna come out and say it they killed Joel too early and the rest of the game feels like an excuse for why Abby did it. Ellie was dumb in going after her in the end and i feel the game didn't punish her enough for it. she could have just let it go or talked with Dina about it but NOOOO she had to go looking for her and gets trapped by ahem people who want to do very bad things. and even after killing their entire base she still wants the smoke from Abby in their final encounter. I get Ellie going after Abby in the first place she was younger and dumber, but now she had a whole new family to take care of, but new Joel being used as a golf tee and professional gas lighter tommy convince her. Abby also felt the same way as in she risked a lot of lives going to Jackson, including one of her friends who was pregnant, but her lust for revenge was just too great. The real kicker was that tommy and Joel SAVE her. I even feel that it would be a good idea for Joel to die in the sequel to the last of us, you know he's getting up there in age. But not like this man, the execution was terrible for its consequences on the story. All in all The last of us part 2 is a very messy game, it's good in gameplay and new ideas in that department get bogged down by a story that wants to excuse the character who killed the main character in the 1st game. Oh yeah one more thing I greatly enjoyed that birthday scene. I like how Joel and Ellie bounced off of each other and it really showed how much Joel cared.