I had hopes this would live up to the very excellent first game, but this falls a bit shy of slightly disappointing second game so far.

Normally I would withhold judgement till later as things can improve over time, but unfortunately the flaws of this show are rather baked in as actors are either good or poor, they don't tend to improve overnight.

Pedro Pascal is normally serviceable but this just isn't the role for him. At no point does he ever feel like Joel who had a quiet masculine and paternal nature. Pedro just feels scruffy. Bella is actually doing a fairly good job with her role, but simply looks nothing like her. I haven't seen casting this bad since Tom Cruise was cast as Jack Reacher.

No one else left a positive or negative impression on me but one thing has to be said.

If you haven't played the games you'll likely enjoy this more than someone who has as the "swapping" of actors for those of different backgrounds is a bit jarring and heavy handed. Normally I don't give a flip, but it's hard to ignore that the "bad guys" belong to the majority demo and the "good guys" are everyone else (Bella being the only exception but of course she's female).

It really takes you out of the fantasy when you can tell who's going to be bad just by their skin tone. The real world isn't like this and I wish Hollywood would get with the times.