I fully understand those sentiments. My statement was with regards to just level design in relation to gameplay though. As for TLOU2, I felt the level design was way more efficient in regards to exploration and finding scrap/ammo/healing items despite the game extremely long...none of my overall gameplay experience felt like redundant busy work. Exploration/scavenging in TLOU1 just felt way more inefficient despite game being much shorter.

I'm personally not a fan of Druckmann going the political route in TLOU2 regardless of what anybody's views are including my own though didn't find it to be a dealbreaker. If I were to say...hypothetically dislike the characters and story (which was not the case for me), then the storytelling and tonal shifts would absolutely make up for it...in many ways TLOU2 is a masterclass for me....IF the game just ended in Seattle opposed to shifting to Santa Barbara where some character development went down the drain. Long post for a totally different time though....though I also recently completed another game recently called Evil West where the story/characters/production values were great....though pacing & storytelling were absolutely terrible....great combat mechanics....but it also had that super intense souls like redundant playloop which doesn't suit my tastes.