When people say The Last of Us has no "gameplay", or a limited amount of it, I always have an innate feeling of disbelief. As if we've played or seen two completely different games or something.
I can say that The Last of Us is most probably my Game of the (last) Generation, and the reasons for that revolve around the game as an entire package, with special focus on it's gameplay, and not just the other quality aspects of it.
It's not just the beautifully written characters, world, narrative and score that make the game impressive. Those things alone are not enough for the game to soar to such acclaim, not for a game released so late in the generation. Instead it relies on the quality of it's actual gameplay to give the rest the foundations to blossom.
The fantastic, visceral combat, with it's beautifully animated sense of weight and kill satisfaction. The dynamic upgrade system and inventory, that is highly rewarding and also adds a sense of tension and immediacy to decisions. The excellent combat scenario's that offer an entertaining multitude of potential advances, from pure stealth, to all out carnage, to diverse tactical consideration. The pacing throughout, which constantly balances areas of tension and intensity, with calm, serenity, exploration and beauty, and then carefully chooses when to throw you back in to an emotionally engaging fray all over again. The excellent enemy AI, that is tweaked to be intelligent enough to be challenging to fight against, but not too realistic that it's game breaking or un-fun. The addition of the different alternate enemy types, clickers, runners etc, that offer gameplay differentiating, often scary and aggressive alternatives, and so on and so on.
It's just sublime in nearly every sense of the word (imo). A truly ground breaking achievement, more so given it's not even particularly innovative or new, just immensely refined and supremely satisfying.
This 'Last of Us has no gameplay' narrative, is to me, utterly absurd, and going back to my first point, I honestly do wonder if those who say such baffling things have actually played the same game I have.