The Last of Us Part II is a misunderstood masterpiece.

God, I don't even know where to start. It just makes me sad to see how many people hate this game. I understand it's not what people were expecting. But putting the bias of the love for the first game aside, I truly believe this game deserved all the praise it got.

I really only want to talk about the most controversial aspect: the story. I don't care what anyone says, it's genius. It hurts, man. Killing off Joel was a crazy and risky decision by part of the writers, as he was the protagonist of the first game. Even if his death was a plot device, it wasn't nonsensical or insignificant. Joel's death not only moved the plot forward, but it also allowed Ellie to have insanely good character development.

Ellie is the ultimate way for the game to transmit its message to the player. Her journey for revenge only ends up making her lose everything she had. She is a completely different person by the end of the game and I love that. She is excellently written and I will stand by that until I die. She genuinely became one of my favorite protagonists by the end of the game.

You can't talk about the story without also talking about Abby. One of the singlehandedly most controversial and hated characters in gaming ever, but I still think she's an amazing character. By the end of her campaign, I did not feel a single bit of hatred for her. Quite the opposite, actually.

Abby is a heavily misunderstood character. People forget that, in the apocalypse, there are no heroes or villains, only survivors. What Abby did to Joel was horrible, but wasn't what Joel did to the world horrible too? Nor Joel or Abby were morally correct, and that's okay. Abby is human too, and her campaign made sure to show this. I genuinely believe that if you hate Abby, you do not understand the circumstances that not just her, but the world of The Last of Us as a whole are in.

And finally, the ending, and alongside it, the theme of the game: the cycle of revenge. Ellie, after choosing to go back and find and kill Abby, just when she's about to win over her, decides to let her live. She decides to break the cycle. As much as people will get mad for Ellie not killing Abby, the truth is, if it wasn't this way, then the game's central theme wouldn't really make sense. It's not just about revenge, but about forgiveness. Learning how to forgive is something we as humans overlook too much. Maybe it's not about forgiving our dad's killer, but about forgiving others for things we sometimes never let go of, even though we should.

After all of this, Ellie comes back home, only to find out her girlfriend, Dina, and their son have abandoned her. Ellie lost it all. She lost Joel, she lost Jesse, she lost Tommy. And now, she lost Dina, and her son, too. She became so obsessed with the idea of revenge that she only ended up hurting herself and those around her. And now, she's alone.

Finally, Ellie goes upstairs to her guitar. The guitar, an instrument capable of playing beautiful tunes. And now, the only thing she has left. The only thing connected to Joel that she has left. She plays it, but, because she lost two fingers in her fight with Abby, it doesn't sound well anymore. Those two fingers she lost represent all the horrible things Ellie has done, and the guitar is her life. She thought that after avenging Joel, her guitar would sound happier and more vibrant. But, the only thing that this pursuit of revenge caused is that nothing in her life sounded the same to her.