Even though I knew the original story from the game, I was pleasantly surprised by its adaptation and changes, realizing what moments were removed and/or replaced. I found both positives and negatives in it. But let's move in order relative to Season 1, superficially without spoilers and having a reference of the original game.

The original atmosphere of the game is fully preserved. Changes harmoniously transition into each other, and some even better reveal the original (video game) story! All the tedious moments from the game to the series - removed, which is always wanted to do in some moments. Though the secondary characters are visually slightly different from the original characters, but this does not affect the viewing experience at all. The standard of quality of the series from HBO Max is pleasing.

As for the negatives, that is: First of all, the actress that Ellie plays, sorry to say, is not right for me. She, though well acted, lacks that lamplight empathy and affection for the character. The actor playing Joel is good, but I would have considered other candidates, as it feels a certain amount of wrong from the original character.

Secondly, there were some fairly important moments left out (I counted about a dozen of them!!!) that should have been left out, but they were unfortunately removed or otherwise changed for the worse, giving less effect while watching. Without some, again, moments, the scenes that await us (hopefully) in season two won't be as meaningful, and that's unfortunate for people who don't have the original experience.

Thirdly, although the overall opinion of the series is that it was implemented normally, there is a feeling of lost original nuances and different directing. It's like they took away different significant plot points and made a different approach to directing that was originally better in the video game. This series does not convey that depth of drama, does not form those special viewer feelings for the main characters.

The series will not disappoint fans of one of the best story-driven video games in general. It has various flaws, but there are positives as well, although it could have been made even better. It seems to me that even though the series runs an average of 50 minutes, which is the norm for series, but here they should have given more time to unfold the plot, as they did in episode 3 with a canonical change.