I wanted to talk about the two scenes that I dislike in greater detail, and there's no way to do that without full spoilers.

The first one is Dyne's death. I'm okay with changes if they're done well, but those Shinra troops popping up out of nowhere to shoot him completely destroyed the moment for me. It also felt like an excuse for Dyne to go out in a blaze of glory rather than the sad, intentional suicide of the original game. I will admit the part where Dyne falls on top of Barrett as he's dying was really well done, but that moment was also given no chance to breathe. Instead of having time to process the scene you just witnessed, you're immediately thrust into a boss battle with Palmer slapping his ass and taunting you.

The scene becomes even more of a clusterfuck as Dio rides in on his monster truck to tell Barrett he's sorry, and we have to engage in an Uncharted style shootout with Palmer, the Turks, and more Shinra troops. By the way, all of this is happening while Dyne's body is still lying on the ground a few feet away.

The other scene I want to talk about is Aerith's death. Whether you think she survived in an alternate timeline, or she becomes a figment of Cloud's imagination, it doesn't change the fact that the death itself had no impact. They play the sad death music from the original, but it doesn't really work when you have no idea what just happened. It's hard to get emotional when the game is trying to tell you she might've survived anyway.

After the Sephiroth fight, we skip to the whole party in mourning except for Cloud, implying that she's dead in this timeline. But then Cloud sees Aerith sitting next to him, and he's clearly convinced she's still alive. Their happiness next to everyone else's sadness was extremely uncomfortable. Something about it just felt creepy and wrong to me.

The final scene cg scene is also strange, because it starts playing triumphant music as Aerith says goodbye to Cloud, but something about it feels off. It's hard to tell what they were going for here. Are we supposed to be happy like Cloud, that Aerith maybe survived somehow? Or is he just in extreme denial, and she's actually dead in all timelines? Red being able to sense Aerith implies that she's in the lifestream, so who knows?

I don't think the game ends on a happy note, despite the music seemingly trying to convince me otherwise. The rest of the party, particularly Tifa, is so distraught about Aerith's death that she doesn't even want to speak to Cloud. I think he's in denial that he put Aerith's dead body into the water, which is why we skipped that scene for now.

Hopefully part 3 has answers to all of these questions, because this ending is kind of a mess on its own.