YMMV / Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

• Breather Level: Chapter 16 is a very simple level where Nathan explores a Tibetan village, plays ball with some children and reunites with Elena. In comparison, the preceding level is a tense game of cat and mouse against Lazarevic's armoured Mooks, and the following one introduces the game's most fearsome enemy, the Shambhala Guardian.
• Complete Monster: Zoran Lazarević is a Serbian war criminal responsible for mass murder and torture across the globe, and is working to find Shambhala throughout the game. Invading a Nepalese city currently engulfed in a civil war, Lazarević begins tearing the city apart and killing anyone in his way while looking for clues to Shambhala's location. Lazarević introduces himself to Nathan Drake by killing one of his wounded friends, then trying to do the same to him. Pursued by Drake into the mountains of Nepal, Lazarević leads an attack on a defenseless village in an effort to kill him, murdering numerous innocents in the process. Shooting one of his own soldiers after Nate tried to use the man as a hostage, Lazarević takes Drake's love interests as hostages to force him to find a way into Shambhala, where Zoran plans to use its power to make him and his army invincible, then Take Over the World. When beaten, Lazarević tries to force Drake to kill him and embrace his merciless outlook on the world. Viewing leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, and Pol Pot as "great men," Zoran Lazarević made his mark as the most evil villain Nathan Drake ever encountered.
• Creepy Awesome: Despite being a horrible mass murdering sociopath, Lazarevic's still considered among fans to one of the best video game villains period, probably because he's one of Nate's only enemies to be seriously evil and not to be taken lightly.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Shambhala Guardians. They are fast, hard-hitting, and insanely resilient, with the first one encountered being a Hopeless Boss Fight where you can only Hold the Line until Tenzin forces it to flee. They only take damage in the last couple of chapters, and even then, the only effective weapons against them are crossbows, miniguns, and grenade/rocket launchers—none of which are easy to come by.
  • This game also marks armored soldiers' debut in the series. Two kinds feature in Among Thieves specifically: the normal variant, which uses shotguns or M4 carbines, and hulking minigunners who take three shots from an RPG to kill. Without some grenades on-hand, prepare to waste a lot of ammo on these guys.
• Ending Fatigue: The final act of Among Thieves tends to drag. For the last 4-5 chapters, the plot grinds on at an absolutely glacial pace, with the characters making only minimal progress in each one.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tenzin seems to have quite a fan following, despite most players not speaking Tibetan, even after he first appeared in the second multiplayer beta. It may be because one of his first acts is a Moment of Awesome — stabbing the shit out of a suited Guardian with a massive kukri just before it bitch-slaps the life out of you. Or perhaps his awesome hat.
• Even Better Sequel: Drake's Fortune was considered a great game for its time, and a solid hit for the then-new PlayStation 3 despite a few gameplay issues. Among Thieves is widely regarded as one of the greatest action games ever made, and was universally praised for taking its predecessor's strengths and doubling-down on it: It features a multiplayer mode, much more vibrant locations to explore, a tighter combat system and more polished stealth mechanics. It won more than twenty-five Game of the Year awards.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Nate remarks that Chloe should "play the hero more often." Chloe would later become the hero of her own adventure.
• Love to Hate: Zoran Lazarevic and Harry Flynn are two of the most popular villains in the series, Lazarevic for being a straight up terrifying, psychotic and hammy badass, and Flynn for being a great Foil for Nate.
• Paranoia Fuel: In the levels that take place in the monastery, it's possible to hear roars in the distance and occasionally see some Shambhala Guardians jumping across the rooftops. This usually puts players on the defensive during their first playthrough, as it's impossible to predict when those enemies will launch their attack.
• Signature Scene: Nate hanging from a train at the top of the Himalayas. The scene is used in the game's cover, twice in the main game (the first being the prologue) and was brought up in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End by Sam Drake
• Tear Jerker:
  • Lazarevic shooting an injured Jeff in cold blood, after Drake went through an escort mission just to save him.
  • Nate trudging through a blizzard while wounded, gradually freezing/bleeding to death until Tenzin finds him.
  • Schafer's death scene.
  • Elena almost dying after Flynn suicide-bombs the heroes at the climax.
• That One Boss: Lt. Draza has tough-as-hell body armor, is fought in a narrow arena, and needs to be finished off with a melee QTE.
• That One Level:
  • "Desperate Times" has a moment where Nate and Chloe are up against several soldiers and a helicopter. At one point, the player just jump out of a building that is falling while dealing with several foes who can potentially One-Hit Kill Nate.
  • "A Train To Catch" has two Hold the Line shootouts that can be quite aggravating. The first of these has Drake hanging from billboards (which limits you to just a pistol), while in the second, he's trapped in an overturned train car getting shot at from every possible angle.
  • "The Monastery/Reunion" is an excruciatingly long trek through a temple complex swarming with Lazarevic's Mooks (including Elite Mooks). Checkpoint Starvation makes the action in these chapters very tedious, especially the shootout at the beginning of "Reunion" where several Mooks don't spawn until you're close enough for them to likely one-shot you.
  • "Broken Paradise", the penultimate chapter of the game, is ridiculously tough, being filled with gunfights with heavy-armored mooks, snipers, grenadiers, minigunners, and the Shangri-La guardians, sometimes all at once. Quite possibly the worst segment is a moment where Drake, Elena, and Chloe are treading a waterway and are immediately attacked by regular mooks, five armored troops at once, two snipers, and two more with grenade launchers; it comes shortly after a segment with you fighting several troops and Guardians which will likely have left you low on ammo, and there's next to no cover in the whole section. There's a good reason the overpowered crossbow is often available during this chapter: you're going to need it.
• Woolseyism: Nate's "In Like Flynn" joke is pretty exclusive to English, so it gets changed for the dubs. For instance, in French, Nate makes a pun about "On lâche rien", the official song of the French Communist Party.