Alright, finished this about a week ago. Here's my thoughts.
First off, I loved the first game, and was pretty eagerly awaiting this one. I decided early on to play it as blind as possible - no reviews, no impressions, nothing about the game. I of course heard about the leaks, but avoided them obviously (btw, fuck you OP for that thread title change).
End verdict: maybe a 5 or 6 out of 10. Ultimately I'm still glad I played it, and will still probably play a Last of Us 3 if it ever gets made, but the final result was a very draining and disappointing experience, and not just for the obvious reasons.
Having had time to think about it since finishing it, I'm actually okay with the story decisions and everything that "happens" in the game. I'm not one of those gamers who thinks it "disrespected" the first game by killing Joel, or anything like that. But what I absolutely HATED was being forced to play as Abby during the middle of a cliffhanger where she's literally holding a gun to Ellie's head. Cliffhangers are terrible devices; I hate how so many storytellers use them as a crutch, and how some people actually think they may even make a story better by increasing tension (they do the opposite), but this one is even worse because the person you're now being forced to play as is the one who is literally threatening our protagonist in said cliffhanger, as well as the person who brutally kills Joel in the beginning.
I know how Neil Druckmann wanted to make a game about empathy and playing from two different (opposing) perspectives (I read his interview on that), and I get that to some degree. But the way he ended up doing it was the single worst way possible. A much better way would have been to have the two storylines alternate more frequently from the beginning. This might have needed some story juggling, but it definitely could have been done, and cliffhangers could have been avoided. Would it still require a leap of faith in order to play as Abby again for the first time after she's killed Joel? Sure, but not nearly to the same degree, and you wouldn't feel like you're simply "catching up" during the Abby sections (which is what it always feels like when you have fractured timelines induced by cliffhangers). Plus a lot of tension could have added by having this approach - wondering when the two might cross paths, who will find Tommy first, if Ellie is going to end up killing the boy that Abby rescues, etc. They could have done a lot of "teases" by doing this. Having thought about this "game that could have been" just makes it more disappointing.
As it was, I just ended up wanting to get through the Abby sections as quickly as possible in order to get back to the cliffhanger moment. So I played in a way I hadn't done with the Ellie sections and just rushed through it as much as I could; this of course wasn't really feasible on Hard because I would be under-supplied, so I switched the game to Easy and kept it that way until I got back to playing Ellie. While some parts of Abby's storyline were still interesting, particularly the parts regarding the conflict between the two factions, I wasn't invested as much as I could have been. Mostly I just wanted to get back to the cliffhanger moment and then continue from there. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the game is mostly over after that part is finally resolved - what follows feels more like an epilogue than anything else. It was nice to finally be back to playing as Ellie, and I feel like the ending actually has a hopeful element to it, but that whole forced switch at the worst moment possible really soured the whole experience for me. I just couldn't enjoy it as much anymore. I HAD been enjoying it up until that part, about as much as I had enjoyed the first game.
So the end result is very mixed experience. Can't say I hated it, but can't say I liked it either.
Gameplay-wise there's not much to talk about. It's pretty much the same as the first one in that regard, so if you liked the gameplay in that one (I did) you shouldn't have any problems with that department in this one.
