Despite its massive impact on the gaming industry I never had the chance to sit down and play The Last of Games. This was because of a combination not having access to the consoles when these games were exclusive to Sony hardware and not having time when the first game finally made its jump to PC.

On top of this, by the time Part I made its way to PC, the show was already around the corner so I decided to just watch that instead. A combination of this, cultural mitosis and the massive reaction to Part II (plus an insane amount of spoilers that hit me) meant that I was already clued up on the majority of the two games’ narrative before even touching a controller.

It’s with this unique perspective that I go into The Last of Us Part II Remastered, a new take on Part II for the PlayStation 5. Originally launched in 2020, our editor and PlayStation reviewer Robin-Leigh Chetty mentioned some vague things about Part II, especially about how traumatic it is and how it’s a “short bursts” experience should the overwhelming gloom ruin your day.

(You can read his launch review of Part II here, by the way).

So what is the Part II Remastered experience like for someone like me, especially as this is now the “definitive edition” for other newcomers alike?

As you can see in the announcement trailer above, Naughty Dog and Sony are promising us redone visuals for the latest PlayStation, some smaller content like player skins, and an entirely new mode called No Return.

Of course, we have to start with those visuals and, maybe this isn’t a surprise to anyone, but this game is impeccable and may be the best-looking game not just on the PlayStation 5, but across the world of gaming. From sheer texture quality to thousands of unique animations, Part II Remastered is here to stun.

We can’t talk about these visuals, however, without a bit of a malaise from the public who see this kind of graphical one-upmanship to be not as important as it was in the past. Those who have already played Part II may also not see the purpose of this remaster or why they should return to it and open up their wallets again.

While I don’t have the answers for those people what I can say is that Part II is a game that actually benefits from better visuals that benefit both the gameplay and story. I don’t mean that the benefit is simply “things look better” but instead the heightened graphics push realism on you in buckets.

The horror of the Infected, the gruesomeness of the combat, that gloom that Robin warned me about are all turned up to 11 when the game looks even closer to reality.

Part II Remastered shines in enclosed environments like buildings clouded by Infected spores or, as you can see in the header image above, one of the many times you need to venture into the danger of darkness with only your flashlight illuminating the path.

At some point my brain just switched into the territory of “yep this is real and you are in danger” and while that is an effect that horror games with much lesser graphics have been pulling off for many years, Part II Remastered is, well, masterful.

Open environments are equally stunning to behold but it’s the smaller-scale stuff that impressed me.

While I won’t focus too much on the raw gameplay (again check out Robin’s review for that) I do want to add that those visual improvements even benefit that aspect, even if they may be psychological. For example my fear of being one-shot by a Clicker, again, led me to be more aggressive than I may have before, using precious ammo to shoot them on sight instead of more carefully taking them out with stealth or other crafty methods. I simply didn’t want to deal with the stress of sneaking around them.

And on that front, the improvements also make that sense of dread even worse. I really couldn’t stand playing Part II Remastered for more than a couple of hours as it was just too stressful and effective at its overwhelming dread.

For new gameplay we have the No Return mode and, as the resident roguelike fanboy here at Hypertext, I was excited to check it out. While No Return has a higher emphasis on straight-up combat compared to the main game, you still need to do a lot of stealth, resource gathering and crafting to stay alive.

After picking a character with unique traits and starting attributes, you can select from a tree of missions that are unique. Enemy factions, the win condition, random modifiers, rewards, and more are all shuffled for each mission which shakes up The Last of Us formula.

Between missions, you’re in a safe house where you can unlock new skills, weapons and other boons to grow your character, and then it’s on to the next mission. Rinse and repeat until you beat the final boss at the end of the mission tree or, more likely, you die, lose everything and start again.

A successful run to beat the boss only takes around 45 minutes but let me tell you those are an insanely stressful 45 minutes. Unlike the main game which paces out its hectic moments with calm sections, cutscenes, and time to quietly collect resources, No Return is all gas all the time. The short minute or so you spend in the safe house isn’t enough to decompress and, when a run ends, you may find yourself way too worn out to start again.

This is a bit of a failure of the “just one more go” nature that most great roguelikes share but I am sure the stress levels will go down as you become more comfortable.

Those who want to play No Return into the far future can look forward to a huge list of challenges, skins for the playable characters, weapon skins, daily challenges and chasing score. Once the playerbase has mastered No Return and can reliably beat the boss, it’s this scoring system that will ultimately be the endgame for success.

Those who like The Last of Us for its story and characters will also be happy to know that No Return is the only way to play as characters who would have just been NPCs otherwise. They will have to play quite a bit of No Return to unlock these characters, but it’s great that Naughty Dog didn’t stick us with some no-names.

With such glowing things to say about how this game looks, plays and stresses me out, The Last of Us Part II Remastered is an easy recommendation if you are like me who may have never played any of the games before now. It’s also easy to recommend for those who have only watched the series, which covers the events of the first game, making Part II Remastered the perfect entry point.

As for those who played the original version of Part II, it’s a much harder sell. I already explained that you can still enjoy this game even when you know the big twists that it has to offer, but if you have already played through all the nitty-gritty of the base game you may be less tempted to jump back in and buy it again.

I think it would benefit these players, and the potential bottom line of Naughty Dog and Sony, if a demo of Part II Remastered was made available for free. Let players experience at least 30 minutes of the story at one or two levels of No Return to properly immerse themselves in this new package. With so much of my admiration of this game tied up in little moments and atmosphere, a decent chunk of game would need to be put into a demo to properly sell it.

My consultancy bill is all drawn up, I just need to know if I should send it to Naughty Dog, Sony or one of their advertising agents. Get back to me.

As for Part II veterans who don’t see a demo in the future, all I can recommend is trying to play some of the game from someone who already owns it. I highly doubt physical brick-and-mortar stores would have a game like this on the show floor to permanently scare children and adults alike, so that isn’t much of an option.

All I can do is give you my experience of this game in this article, and advise that you seek out similar content if you’re not decided.