It’s because on replay I found out the story totally falls apart by then with the huge materia quest being one of the most contrived, idiotic plots I’ve ever seen in a video game. Shinra is trying to save the world at this point and your party is literally trying to prevent them from doing that just because Shinra’s doing it and not them. At a point where Meteor is already falling and you have seven days to live. Instead of trying to come up with an actual plan, they go ahead and sabotage the guys with the actual plan.

That is smurfing dumb and indefensible.

And even though I’m not big on IX’s battle system (ATB peaked at IV), I still like it more than VII’s since at least the bars never stop going, while FFVII has the bars stop for every tiny animation even on active. And that’s more frustrating to me.

And just keep in mind that I still like FFVII despite sounding harsh, but It’s just that I hadn’t realized how stupid everything past disc 1 is until my recent playthrough, so I felt a little betrayed because VII had been in my top tier before that. Now - not so much, but I still like it and would definitely return to it someday