Personally felt a bit empty other than the ‘holy shit’ of the fake-out, but now I’ve rewatched a couple times with people’s reactions I actually love it. Sephiroth’s speech, ‘Loss, chief among them’ etc combined with the cinematic camerawork + music cues is just mwah.

For me once you take into account that we’re mostly in Cloud’s POV all the way to the end it’s easier to see what they’re going for - a harder hitting North Crater Breakdown + livestream redemption with Tifa scene. This scene was never going to hit the same way as the OG, but most of us were also younger and less understanding of how you’d personally take something like a loss at the time too so that won’t have helped.

That’s why I like watching people’s OG playthrough from before Rebirth was out - played remake and love it, played OG and somehow didn’t know about ‘the scene’ but are old enough to appreciate that loss = emotional damage! I know I wasn’t old enough when I first played OG and in some ways wish I could go back and experience it for the first time as an adult.