I never played the game so I went in with only the expectations of a well respected property. The first episodes seemed ok enough to keep me going, but I found Ellie pretty unlikable from the beginning and my understanding was she was supposed to be the softer more endearing character. From then on the show just got worse to me. The Bill/Frank episode was completely useless to the core story, and just felt like a love story shoved into an apocalyptic world where only 5% of it even dealt with the apocalypse.

The rest of the episodes failed to change my engagement with the main characters. I never felt invested in their story, or even cared if they servived. Each episode spent only a few minutes on the actual journey, and spent most of the time of the "main event" of the episode which never allowed the show to breathe and truly feel like a long journey for these characters. It seemed like them walking across the continental US only took them a week (vs 1883 which felt like a true journey across months of time).

Episode 8 was the first episode that was gripping and engaging, where I actually cared if Ellie made it and was vested in her outcome. But then the series finished with episode 9 which was an incredible let down. It all seemed to end so quickly, the stand off with Joel and the Fireflies was underwhelming and poorly shot IMO. By the end I felt like I just wasted an hour of my evening.

Production quality was decent which is why I gave it a 6. But the story and the characters were mediocre at best. Lame.