Well, first of all, a game "being overrated" is a personal view. So you'll always find someone who thinks a game is overrated. I find TLoU not overrated. Even a game scoring 10/10 isn't flawless. No game ever is flawless. That applies to TLoU, too. But it's a well crafted experience with thrilling events and dramaturgy with simple but solid and glitch-free survival mechanics. The game doesn't over-complicate things but still offer you a crafting system that is really useful. There a many scenes that let you decide how to solve the conflict (not story-wise, of course, but gameplay-wise). Exploring get you rewarded by finding stuff you need for crafting or by finding things that adds up to the atmosphere.
The AI is clever and your followers react believable to their surround. They staring at things like posters, looking under stuff. Ellie starts to whistle or hum a song, comment different actions and situations. For the atmosphere there is this downside that the enemy AI won't react to your followers AI if you haven't spotted. For the gameplay it's good because... you know games like Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 and other ones with company AI being more useless and a pain in the ass than helpful. The gameplay is rather slow-paced so you have to take your time, adapt your "consumption" accordingly. It's not a Soldier of Fortune 1 or Quake. Focusing on story, characters, your surroundings and the subtle things. I've finished it three times and every time I noticed something else I haven't before.
The graphics aren't state-of-the-art but the atmosphere is great and the graphics and art-design deliver exactly what you need for this sort of game. The voice acting and cutscene acting is superb. And the protagonist isn't a typical hero you would expect.
Sure, the story isn't something like a Memento by Christopher Nolan. But then again it's a simple apokalyptic story with mankind doomed to die or kill themselves. But for that it does a pretty good job with the story-arc and its dramaturgy.
Of course there will be people criticizing things about the game. As for any game. You could criticize the lack of exploring (it would be wrong to say there is no exploring at all, however). Maybe one do really think so but then the same person should be honest and criticize this for many other action and story-driven games. And for that genre it's probably over 80% of them because it's rather untypical for such games. And one have to weight negative points: is this a real shortcoming you can't get over with and would eliminating it make the game better WITHOUT creating shortfall in some other aspect? (let's say someone wished more action. That could be a legitit criticism. But wouldn't it less survival, making finding stuff more and more obsolet?)
I don't think it's the best game I've ever played but it's a damn good one and therefore not overrated. My amount of playthroughs speak for itself. I think it's only topped by Deus Ex 1, Fallout 2 and Prince of Persia Warrior Within (this one with all its flaws >.>).
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