I ain't gonna lie, I'm a lil salty at the ending having just finished it, but I need time to sit with it for awhile. These are my initial impressions that are subject to change.
There was too much Abby time for my liking and I didn't really care for her character or story although I get why she did what she did. It's meant to show that there is no one right side to the story I get it but selfishly I didn't give af, I still wanted to kill her and her whole crew because I'm attached to Joel and Ellie. Playing as Abby for those long stretches of time threw off the game's pacing and delved into an unnecessary side story that was purely meant to humanize her character but failed in doing so IMO.
Although I can admit it resulted in some very intense fun gameplay sequences while playing as Abby (Hospital level, Hotel level, forest at night) I would've preferred doing these levels as Ellie but maybe that's just my personal bias speaking. All in all it winds up feeling like everything we did was for nothing with that kind of ending, I understand Ellie chose to forgive in the end seeing that revenge is an endless cycle of violence that is pointless but it doesn't leave any sense of closure. Ellie and Abby never even have a conversation with each other where they come to terms on where the other is coming from and acknowledge each other's pain which woulda been dope given with how they were trying to show the parallel between them.
All in all still a tremendous game and a brilliant effort by ND and I'm appreciative that they gave us this. I don't believe this needs a sequel though, they should leave it alone and let it close the series.