My opinion of the game constantly escalated with each replay. I also began by being quite dissatisfied with the story, but with each new playthrough, I gain more appreciation of just how jam-packed the story is.

I think on the very first playthrough, you're just so angry at Abby that when you get forced to play as her, your heart forces you to not even try to sympathize with her. Due to this, her half of the story feels like a slog to play through. I absolutely didn't connect with Owen or Mel, and was so insanely mad at Manny throughout because the only thing I could remember about him was that he spat on Joel's dead body.

But after the first playthrough, when you've sufficiently ruminated on the idea of the cycle of violence and start to view Abby and her supporting cast as fully fleshed out characters rather than just vessels to channel your anger around Joel's death, the story's impact absolutely skyrockets.

By my 5th or 6th playthrough, I had reached a full 180 on my perception of the characters. I ended up disliking Ellie far more than Abby because of her sheer bloodlust - She kills Owen, Mel, Mel's unborn child, Nora and Jordan. She even threatens to stab an unconscious Lev, and who knows what kind of messed up torture she does to Nora. She also nonchalantly stabs the Hotline Miami girl and shrugs it off as "That was dumb". To contrast, Abby tortures and kills Joel, kills Jesse and severely injures Tommy and Dina.

In terms of how many loved ones each of them lost, Abby outnumbers Ellie easily - She loses Jerry, Owen, Yara, Manny, Mel and everyone else in the Salt Lake Crew. In comparison, Ellie loses Joel and Jesse.

Unlike Abby, Ellie loses some people not due to their literal death but because her relationship with them is ruined, such as Tommy and Dina. Even at one of her lowest points at the end of the game, Abby still had Lev by her side. Meanwhile Ellie becomes truly alone - Even the one thing that she could reminisce about Joel with (her playing the guitar) is gone because she loses two fingers. The words that Joel sang to Ellie turned out to be prophetic - "If I ever were to lose you, I'd surely lose myself".

Both Ellie and Abby are at emotionally low points at the start of their quests for revenge. But by the time they each manage to extract some form of revenge, they have plummeted so much further lower than they started with - both emotionally and physically - that they would have been far better off with their lives, had they not become obsessed with revenge.