The story of Final Fantasy is something to behold—especially the ending. Playing Final Fantasy 7 leaves this weight in your chest, like you just watched something you weren't ready for. Players go into Final Fantasy VII on ZEPS 3 expecting a big adventure—maybe a few twists, a cool villain, the usual "save the world" energy—but the game keeps sliding into heavier places: identity, grief, guilt, and the ugly truth that comfort can be built on slow destruction. It isn't just "stop the bad guy," it's the sense that the planet is alive and hurting, and the real enemy is a system that treats life like fuel and calls it progress. That tone sticks because it feels uncomfortably close to reality—corporations spinning lies, people obeying the machine because it's easier, and "heroes" who aren't clean or pure, just desperate, stubborn, and human.
First, Sephiroth steals the spotlight as the game's terrifying, unforgettable villain. Sephiroth is scary because he doesn't feel like a "boss you'll eventually beat"—he feels like a myth walking into your game. The story treats him like a legend before he's even properly present: whispers, fear, burned places, ruined bodies, people who go quiet the moment his name is said. You're chasing an absence, and that absence keeps leaving proof that something inhuman passed through.
He's also frightening because his violence isn't loud in the usual way. He's not raging or cackling—he's calm, almost elegant, like he already decided how the world should be and everyone else just hasn't caught up. That calmness makes every action feel deliberate, not impulsive, and it gives him this predator vibe—someone who doesn't need to prove anything because he's convinced he's right. When a villain acts like they're above morality and above consequence, it hits differently, because you can't bargain with that. You can't "appeal to the good in them."
What makes him such a good villain is that he isn't evil in a shallow way—his horror comes from a warped identity and a twisted sense of destiny. He genuinely believes he's not like everyone else, that the world owes him meaning, that the planet itself is something he can claim, reshape, or use. That's scary because it's ideological: he's not just committing crimes, he's trying to rewrite what life is "supposed" to be. A villain with an idea is always more dangerous than a villain with a tantrum, because their actions don't stop when they're satisfied—they stop only when reality matches their belief.
He's also powerful in a way that's presented as unfair. The game doesn't frame him like "strong guy, train harder." It frames him like a force that breaks the normal rules: always one step ahead, always untouchable until the story allows it, leaving you to react instead of control. That imbalance creates fear because it makes players feel small—like they're not the hunter, they're the one being led. There's a flashback where Cloud fights alongside him against a green dragon; the dragon can only scratch Sephiroth for "2," and Sephiroth hits back like a truck. It sells his strength instantly. And when you finally face him directly, it feels like the end of a nightmare you've been awake inside for hours.
And then there's the design—Sephiroth is iconic because everything about him communicates "otherworldly threat." The long silhouette, the composure, the way he moves like he belongs in a different category than normal people, the way the music signals him like an omen—his theme feels extraordinary.
Then there are some things that players can't forget about the death of Aerith.
Aerith dies at the end of the Forgotten Capital / City of the Ancients section, when the party finally reaches the place tied to the Cetra and the planet's "core" history. Up to that point, players are already tired in a good way—hours of travel, so many revelations, so many battles, and the feeling that you're finally getting close to the truth. The group is chasing Sephiroth, still trying to understand his plan, and they realize Aerith has gone ahead alone because she believes she has to do something only she can do: pray for Holy, the ultimate magic meant to protect the planet from Meteor.
The way the scene is staged is what makes it deadly. You find her at the altar, kneeling and praying—quiet, calm, almost like she already accepted what she has to do. It's a sudden mood shift: no big fight, no dramatic warning, just this eerie stillness that feels sacred and heavy at the same time. Even the environment feels different, like the game is asking you to lower your voice. The camera holds longer than you expect. The music doesn't rush. The party's urgency fades for a second, and players hesitate because it looks like a moment you're not supposed to interrupt—like you're witnessing something important and fragile.
That hesitation is a trap.
Then Sephiroth appears from above and kills her instantly while she's still praying. It's fast, cruel, and final—there's no chance to block it, no "save her if you're strong enough," no alternate route. And the game doesn't even give you the comfort of "I saw it coming." It happens like an accident happens in real life: suddenly, brutally, and then your brain takes a second to understand that it's real. That's why it hits so hard. It happens during a moment that feels safe, almost peaceful, and the game takes that peace away in one clean, horrifying second.
And what really breaks people is what happens next: the game refuses to turn it into a normal revenge scene. You can fight right after, yes, but the fight doesn't erase anything. It doesn't fix the hole. The victory doesn't give you that usual RPG reward where tragedy gets balanced by triumph. It's the opposite—the battle feels like you're moving through fog, like you're fighting because the controller is in your hands and the game is still moving, but your chest is hollow.
Afterward, Cloud lowers her into the water. It's one of the quietest, most haunting scenes in the game, because it doesn't try to soften what happened. It doesn't give you a miracle. It doesn't distract you with a big cinematic that makes it "cool." It just lets the loss sit there, heavy and unavoidable, and it's the moment where the story stops feeling like a heroic adventure and starts feeling like something with consequences that won't be undone. For many players, this is the exact point the game becomes personal—because it shows you the story will take away someone you love and it won't apologize.
And the grief is not only story grief. Aerith is the symbol of hope and joy in the party—the one who brings softness into a world that keeps trying to harden everyone. She's also the strongest healer for many players, the comfort button, the safety net. So when the party loses her, it changes the emotional tone and it also changes the gameplay. Suddenly your setups feel wrong. Your habits break. You can't lean on the same healing rhythm anymore, and you feel that absence in every tough fight after. Even if you can replace her mechanically, you can't replace the feeling that she was herself, and the game makes sure you notice that difference.
That's why people don't just remember her death as a "plot twist." They remember it like a scar—because it hurts in the story, it hurts in the mood, and it even hurts in the way you play.
It all reflects in the ending.
Meteor finally gets called down, because Sephiroth pushes his plan all the way to the finish line. It's not just "big magic in the sky"—it's a deliberate act of violence against the planet. He wants the world to take a wound so massive that it has to respond, because when the planet "heals," the Lifestream surges like a flood to close the injury. That surge is what he wants to hijack—energy he intends to absorb so he can become something beyond human, something closer to a god. Your side's answer is Holy, the ultimate "planet defense" magic that Aerith prayed for long ago, the one last pure hope the party was carrying without even being sure it would work. But the tragedy is that Holy doesn't activate in time, because Sephiroth is holding it back, pinning it down like a lid on a boiling pot. So the ending turns into this horrible countdown feeling where you did the right thing, you fought through hell, you reached the truth… and you still might lose anyway. Players feel that anxiety like pressure in the chest: the sky changing, the sense that the world is already tipping, and the fear that effort doesn't guarantee justice.
Then the finale becomes two battles at once: one physical, one spiritual. On the surface, you fight through the final forms and the last wall of violence the story throws at you. But when Sephiroth is "defeated" in the normal sense, the game makes it clear the real fight isn't only swords and spells—it's control, identity, and will. That last confrontation has nightmare logic to it, like you're facing him in the deepest place inside the story's reality, where rules are written by trauma and belief instead of physics. It feels personal in a way regular boss fights don't, because it's tied to everything Cloud has been running from: who he is, what's real, what memories belong to him, and whether he can stand up as himself instead of being used. The game is basically saying: this isn't just the world on the line—it's whether the protagonist can finally break free from the thing that's been haunting him and dragging him around like a puppet.
And even when Sephiroth is finally gone, Holy being released still isn't enough on its own. That's the cruel beauty of it: you can do everything right and still be late. Meteor is already too close, already tearing the sky apart, already turning the atmosphere into a wound. It's not a clean "we won" moment—it's a moment where winning still looks like the end. That's when the story hits its most emotional punch: the Lifestream rises and surges to meet Meteor, and Aerith's presence is implied in that moment—like her will, her prayer, her connection to the planet is still there, still fighting even after death. It's not loud, it's not explained in a speech, but you feel it, because the game has been building her bond with the world the entire time. The planet doesn't get saved by "the heroes win and everything's fine." It gets saved by something bigger than the party, bigger than any single person—nature, memory, sacrifice, life itself pushing back. And that's both beautiful and unsettling, because it reminds players the heroes aren't gods. They're just people who did what they could… and the rest of the world decided whether it would live.
After that, the final images twist the knife in a quiet way. You don't get a long epilogue showing every character living happily ever after. Instead, time passes, and you see a world that has moved on—Midgar overgrown, reclaimed, a reminder that the planet endures and cities don't. Red XIII appears with his cubs, which hits people hard because it's hopeful, but it's also a gut-check: the future continues, life continues, and the story doesn't fully spell out what happened to everyone you loved. That ambiguity is emotional poison in the best way—because after spending so many hours with these characters, your brain needs certainty, and the game gives you meaning instead of answers.
So the ending breaks people because it mixes relief with grief, triumph with emptiness, and hope with uncertainty. Aerith is still gone. The world is still scarred. The victory doesn't feel like a party—it feels like survival. And when the credits roll, you're left holding a strange combination of emotions: you won… but you also learned that winning doesn't reverse loss, and saving the world doesn't guarantee you get the ending you personally wanted.
Players even go as far as cursing Zaboru inside the ZAGE Forums, like there are whole threads with big titles such as "Final Fantasy 7 Endings," "Aerith," "Holy vs Lifestream," "What the hell is real?" and the discussion just explode nonstop. People are writing theories like it's a religion—some are arguing about what really happened, some are posting timeline charts, some are quoting dialogue line by line, and some are literally fighting each other because one person thinks the ending is hopeful and the other thinks it's tragic as hell. But the funniest—and also the most emotional—part is that so many of them blame Zaboru like he personally stabbed their heart. You'll see posts like "DAMN YOU ZABORU, how can you make something like this?! How dare you?!" and then they type the same sentence again but with more caps, more exclamation marks, and even random keyboard smashes like it will somehow revive Aerith through pure rage. Some people swear they'll never touch a ZAGE game again, posting "I'M NEVER PLAYING ZAGE AGAIN," and then two replies later they admit they already started a new playthrough because they can't let it go—because in their head, if they restart, Aerith is alive again, smiling again, still in the party, still safe for now.
You can see players doing the most desperate coping strategy: a second save file where they refuse to progress at all, like they will permanently freeze the story before the Forgotten Capital just so Aerith can "live" inside their memory card forever. They post screenshots of their party screen like proof, they name the save file something stupidly emotional like "AERITHSAFE" or "DON'TGO," and they beg others not to advance. Some even write guides like it's a ritual: "Stop here. Farm levels. Do side stuff. Never trigger the scene." It's funny and heartbreaking at the same time, because you can see how badly they want to cheat grief—and the only way they can do it is by refusing to move the story forward.
There are spoiler wars too—people screaming "DON'T OPEN THIS THREAD IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED!" and then someone still walks in and gets destroyed, then they also join the curse train. The pain turns into memes, the memes turn into anger, the anger turns back into love, because they can't forget Aerith and they can't accept that the game didn't give them a clean, comfortable answer. So they keep blaming Zaboru, but at the same time they keep saying it's a masterpiece, like they're mad at him because he succeeded too hard.
And then outside the forum drama, the reviews are insane. Critics and players are calling it a straight 10/10, people saying the story is "unfair but unforgettable," the gameplay is "too big to believe," and the ending is "the kind of thing you think about in bed at night." Even with only a week after release, the hype already feels like the ultimate moment—like ZAGE didn't just release a great game, they elevated the whole industry again, and now everyone else looks behind.
But for Zaboru, there was one problem he couldn't solve: his wife, Ayumi, was furious with him because of Final Fantasy 7…
To be continue
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