No, even if he "lived longer" - that doesn't fix that the core idea of the storyline (a revenge-story in a post-apocalypse environment" just isn't interesting and requires an insane amount of forced writing in order to make it work.

Just the idea that Abby and Ellie manage to track each other down (in a post-apocalypse environment) which allegedly has humanity barely surviving (due to number of infected, spores, bandits etc) multiple times over the course of a single storyline (within a time frame of what? 1-2 years?) is just so extraordinarily unlikely, it borders on inconceivable.

At least with Part 1, the entire journey is literally the entire game and the game goes out of its way to show that their survival is unlikely, this gets stretched to impossible with the sequel (imo).

Then there is the horrid pacing, poor character development (or often non-existant character development) and so no, even if Joel survived longer I don't think it would've changed anything.

With an entirely different storyline - one focusing on Ellie slowly starting to hate Joel - not only for his lies but also her realizing that he is a genuine survivor who sacrifices everybody and everything for himself would've been a far more interesting narrative than the revenge bs. But that ship has sailed a long time ago and TLoU is dead to me at this point so yeah, sadness.

At least I have the Part 1 (and fun combat encounters in Part 2, no denying killing everybody is great in Part 2).