Just finished watching the 10 hour cutscenes/playthrough of the last of us 2. Don't get the hate. Loved it and kinda started sympathizing with abby while hating ellie towards the end. Epic game no matter what the internet says
***************** Spoilers obviously *****************
For me, it was a 9/10 up until about 14 hours in or thereabouts. I liked the the other side of the coin idea with Abby, but I never particularly liked them using it as a vehicle to push some generic revenge is fruitless message. That just resulted in a really bleak tone overall, with a lot of out of character moments, and people awkwardly leaving each other alive for some reason, maps being left around conveniently, etc.
The game also had a really uncharitable ordering of events for Abby and her crew. Flashbacks were massively overused and ****ed the pacing. A major event would happen in the present, and then it'd be several hours later and we still haven't gone back to it. We'd be stuck giving backstory/humanizing Abby through her interactions with these newly introduced characters like Lev/Yara/Owen. Which I think really hurt any development to be experienced there and made the waves of enemies feel like a chore to get through in those sections. It was all right when there was some overlap with Ellie's side of things, or you are engaging with a character like Tommy. But it felt quite side-questy outside of those times.
The gameplay wasn't nearly as advanced as I thought it was going to be after 7 years either, but still very solid. From a technical standpoint it's great obviously.
I think overall I'd go with a 7/10 as a standalone, but I think it largely fails as a sequel. There's better stories to be told with Joel/Ellie, I think. Like that Dinosaur/space museum flashback was beautiful.