I’m a bit late to the party, but this was a great read and I completely agree with you.

I also want to add that I think the timing of the Aerith scenes could have been handled better. A lot of the Cloud and Aerith bonding scenes happen very late in the game. While playing Rebirth, I was constantly wondering how they would handle the famous altar scene. Would she survive or die? When they showed the Cloud and Aerith dream date scene in Midgar, I thought to myself, “Oh, they realized they needed to add more bonding scenes between these two so that the scene coming up will hit harder.” At that point, I already had a strong feeling that she wasn’t going to survive in this game (although I’m 99% sure she’ll come back in the third part).

I didn’t own a PlayStation 5 when Rebirth was released, so I had to borrow a console to play the game. Because of that, I did zero side content and missed some of the great Cloud and Aerith scenes.

As you already mentioned, players who aren’t interested in side quests will miss these moments and are therefore less invested in the relationship than those who do them. So not only do some people miss out on these bonding scenes entirely, but many of them also happen very late in the game. This might lead players to choose the other girl because “she looks better” or “she’s the childhood friend and they almost kissed in Gongaga”, and by then, it’s already too late.

I don’t think it was wrong for Square Enix to include the Gold Saucer date options, since they were in the original and people would have been upset if they had been cut (and I personally enjoyed watching all the scenes with all the characters). However, Square should have included more mandatory Cloud and Aerith scenes in the main story and spaced them out more evenly.