So as I posted earlier, in my opinion they fumbled the Nanaki/Seto bit, which was a bit of a downer for me.
So I was hoping they'd at least stick the landing with the ending and give us that emotional gut punch we were all expecting. Well...I honestly thought it was just a complete and utter mess. While I've been a bit sceptical but tolerant of the whole "Whispers/trying to subvert expectations/multiverse" thing, I just couldn't get with how they handled the ending here. It was an absolute cluster F.
"The moment" happens, but...it doesn't? It kept flipping back and forth between worlds, so it looks like it's happened, then it doesn't. So instead of feeling emotional, you're just thinking "damn, there it is. That's so sad...I think? No wait, yes it is. Or...what? Which version am I seeing now?", then Jenova comes with the music, which I admit was actually very sad and did get to me, but then after Jenova, Bizarro Sephiroth makes a surprise appearance, and it turns out to be a completely insufferable version, because you have to fight him like 6 times, with a random Bahamut thrown in for good measure. You fight as Cloud Solo, then Zack all of a sudden joins the fray, then it switches to another party, back to Zack solo, back to yet another party, and at this point I've completely forgotten about wanting to re-live one of the most iconic moments in all of gaming. I'm just fighting boss after boss, asking myself "why is Zack here? Which version of Cloud is this? Which world is this? So Zack's back in his own world now?"
And then to top it off, you then have to fight human Sephiroth AGAIN, and Aerith comes in one last time. So her death/not death/whatever is just further drained of what little emotional impact this version has, because she just keeps coming in/out/dead/alive. And this particular Sephiroth fight has an insta-kill mechanic until you figure out how to stop it, so again, instead of being caught up in a sad moment, I'm just replaying this boss fight over and over. And let's not even mention the fact that if you lose this fight, there are 3 random options available to you - "Restart from before this battle, restart from this battle" and something else. What do they mean?? "Before this battle" and "this battle" are surely the same thing? I initially kept choosing the 1st option "before this battle", but there was a small cutscene every time I restarted, so I tried "from this battle" to see if that would get right to the start of this last fight, and it took me all the way back to just after Jenova! So I had to fight all the forms of Bizarro Sephiroth again! All my good faith had left at this point and I couldn't be bothered anymore. I just wanted to get it over and done with. Oh, and Aerith still appears in/out till the very end. So before you clock that she's actually dead, you just think "oh, hi again. You're back. Or not. Or you're a multiverse Aerith. Or not. Am I even supposed to be sad still at this point?"
So that's the feeling I'll remember when I look back at finishing playing this game. Not what a beautiful ending it was. Not satisfyingly re-living an iconic gaming moment. I was just incredibly frustrated and wanted it to be freaking done with already, which is not what I wanted to be feeling at all. And bosses aside, I just thought the ending had an air of Kingdom Hearts about it. It's just a vomit of buzzwords over and over that make the story seem like it's stuck on page 1. "reUNioN" "nOT yeT ClouD" "ZaCK?!" "tHE whISPerS!" "I'm stILL alIVE. We'll MeET aGAiN"
I've now got a very sour taste in my mouth waiting for pt3. Time will tell if they'll be able to pull off a miracle and pull it all together.
