Let me start with saying this is one of the best video game adaptations. There's a lot to love in this series that thankfully stayed true to the game while creating space for the show to be it's own so that it wasn't just an exact copy paste. The production, acting, and everything included delivered like a big budget series. It was entertaining for majority of the series but it did have some issues.

The main issue I noticed was the inconsistency of the episodes. Each episode felt like it truly had a different feel to it. Unfortunately that didn't always work out for me. Isolating the series by each episode is what ultimately caused me to not rate it overall higher because there were some episodes that just felt flat.

In terms of casting and characters I felt that the decisions to switch it all up was actually part of what made this show separate from the game and allow it to be good on its own. Although, as much as I really wanted to like Bella Ramsey as Ellie I just for whatever the reason could not. She's really the only character from the show that for some reason didn't feel like the best fit. However, she did do a good job and my person preference/discrepancy aside was a different but good Ellie.

There's a couple episodes that I felt didn't really contribute towards the overall development of the show. They might have been entertaining or were meant to add to the complexities of the show but unfortunately most of the time whatever they were supposed to do ultimately was erased by the end of that episode. My main example would be bill & frank. It was a great storyline but if you removed it from the show and think of it all as a whole did it really make a difference if it was included or not to the main storyline? No not really. However, it would have been an amazing spin-off or could have been a better episode by having more investment into their stories with Joel. Instead he basically just showed up at the end and was like oh - well at least he left me his car with that battery I've been looking for and then cue episode ending.

Finally, the most important criticism of them all. The infected. Where were they? They were decently included for the first half of the series and then they basically disappeared in the second half of the series. It's starting to take some of the corner cutting of shows like the walking dead where the focus shifts away from the post-apocalyptic infected survivors facing them + bad people to just people wondering around until they inevitably find bad people and eventually overcome them. I'm not a fan of it. I think it's cheap and loses sight of the catalysts driving the narrative behind everything. I mean the game was mainly stealth because of how many infected there always was but in the show they just walk around openly no sweat about the infected but they were definitely worried about other people. To me that's an indicator that they lost a bit of focus for the show.

People will complain because they would rather watch a post-apocalyptic neighborhood/high school style tv show than what the content really is which is supposed to be a post-apocalyptic survivorship filled with drama already in it. Yes I'm aware not every second has to be a thrilling action packed show, but that doesn't mean you erase the main fabric of the show either. They will be upset because personally I feel there may have been better options for who played Ellie even though she did do a good job and I just didn't care for her specifically. People will be upset because I'm critical of episodes that are shielded by what they represented or the statement they were trying to convey through storytelling but as a critic of the show I noticed they weren't pivotal to the main storylines progression or could have been accomplished without an entire episode to do it.

People have a right to their own opinions and this is mine. I felt that this was one of the best video game adaptations that fortunately stayed very accurate to the games story while allowing it to develop its own identity. Unfortunately it also lost it's focus and struggled to establish a consistency in each episode & properly convey the main storyline without being sidetracked or ultimately rushed. I mean start to finish by the end it didn't have the same effect that the game did. There's a lot factoring into that but honestly it felt like the show played it a bit safe, conservative with infected, and underwhelmed the main plot by losing focus on it through out. I felt like I kept waiting for that moment where I went "YES!" and the whole series just took a leap into the right direction (like red wedding in GOT or similar) but it just never happened for me. 6/10 - Good not great but has potential to be so much better. I'm excited for the next season and I hope some of the criticisms and feedback will help to improve it.