After some though, I'm fairly on board with seeing how this plays out going forward. This game did a good job at hitting all the nostalgia points and fleshing out the characters. Even if the ending really did come out of left-field, I'm willing to see where it leads.

In retrospect my main issue with the final segment is that the level of powercreep to Advent Children levels just seems stupid. I get that it's for the bombastic cinematic experience, but Cloud effortlessly slicing trains and buildings in half with his sword is quite a jump in power from the rest of the game... like the Midgar Zolom better be ready to sliced into pepperoni at this rate.

This gif pretty much captures it: