I loved the ending (played it in English and Japanese, bawled both times!), but I was really frustrated by other aspects of the game. The writing was really irritating, especially with when it came to so many cutscenes. So many scenes were just fluff with absolutely no momentum whatsoever, with characters just having moments of circular musing over what it means to be a bloody hero. (Square has become so guilty of complete lack of momentum plus 'concept' monologuing in their cutscenes recently, KH2 and Dissidia really have this problem as well.) I was really disappointed with Zack and Aerith, who were both really one-dimensional and irritating. I enjoyed Angeal outside of his monologuing, but Genesis is biggest offender of the circular monloging squad.The biggest disappointment of all was having the uniqueness of Sephiroth's descent into madness from the original game become a bit of an anti-climax, because Genesis and Angeal had just been through the same thing. Even worse, having one of the most iconic scenes in the game altered so Genesis could have yet another wank about being a hero... such a waste. That being said, both Sephiroth and Cloud were represented really well by the game - they were the only two characters in the bloody game that actually felt like two dimensional people. The end of the game really shows Tabata's strength as a director - he thinks outside of the box when it comes to integration of gameplay mechanics plus story. Type 0 wasn't the greatest in either story or character (annoying character archetype brigade, ahoy), but there was some clever story/gameplay integration there, too. Er, for all of this, can we just lay off the pace-destroying monologuing for the VII remake, please?