Just finished the game myself. (RL is killer right now) Another great game, though I hard a harder time grasping the guarding mechanics this time. I got 3/4s of the way through Remake on hard before RL stepped back in, and then I moved on to my very long backlist of games, but in Rebirth I put the guard window booster materia on Cloud and even set it to easy, and I still can only rarely get perfect guards. I didn’t want to end up tearing my hair out so I just finished the game on easy mode.
There were definitely too many mini-game mechanics, though. I hope SE doesn’t go so hard on those in part 3.
I don’t really have anything to say on the game story-wise, it was all really great and I have nothing to add. On the ending with Aerith though,
Spoiler for Aerith in the ending:
I definitely don’t think she’s dead, not spiritually. Her body is dead, but she definitely appears to be a lifestream ghost, her soul still existing in the lifestream, and because the lifestream is so strong in the land of the Cetra. Remember she says that they’re in the land of the Cetra when Cloud asks if she’s okay getting back on her own. (in the Japanese dialogue, the English dub and subtitles were a bit more ambiguous about that) That’s why she was able to go around checking on everybody like we saw in the final cutscene, and Nanaki was able to sense her slightly. But she couldn’t go with them because the lifestream isn’t strong everywhere, and certainly not on the Tiny Bronco in the sky. She’s still standing there in the field after the Bronco has taken off and left, and she never disappears the whole time. If she was in Cloud’s head, she would have disappeared suddenly because he wasn’t there to hallucinate her anymore. She only “disappears” when we shift to somebody else’s PoV since they can’t see her, but as I pointed out she’s still around even after Cloud has left and isn’t there to hallucinate her anymore. The reason Cloud can see her and nobody else can is probably because of his exposure to Mako, aka lifestream, from Hojo’s experiments, or however it came about if they don’t stick to OG lore there; this is probably also why he alone (besides Zack, who also has Mako exposure from being in SOLDIER) gets swept up in the alternate space/universe things like there in the final battle, and that cutscene in space or wherever after you beat Sephiroth in Remake. Similar things happened in original 7 as well, like Cloud’s spirit being pulled into the lifestream to fight normal Sephiroth one last time at the end. Tifa doesn’t have the emerald eyes like Cloud and SOLDIERs so her dive in the lifestream at Gongaga wasn’t strong enough, and nobody else in the party has Mako exposure thus they can’t see her.
Another point that she’s not just in his head is that she didn’t come with them. If Cloud refused to believe she’s dead so strongly that he’s seeing hallucinations, his mind probably would have gone the extra mile and convinced itself that she continued to travel with them and that he just conveniently never sees her interact with anyone, like that one guy in Mason’s mind in Call of Duty Black Ops and many other movies/anime/games where the MC hallucinates someone is there and the hallucination never interacts with anyone else. Plus having Aerith be a constant hallucination as he traveled would have been more in line with the story of how his mind is broken.
And if Aerith was a hallucination, why would we be seeing her going around checking on everyone in the first place? That was all completely out of Cloud’s PoV.
And to address Shadow’s point about Sephiroth above, Cloud HAS to face Sephiroth at this point. He’s literally going to destroy the world. Cloud CAN’T just forget about him and focus only on himself. Also note how she stopped and hesitated before turning around and cheering him on, like she didn’t want that to be his priority. Also it was Cloud’s saying he’d do it, it’s not like she asked him to do it. She didn't try to convince him otherwise because she knows that at some point he has to face him whether either of them like it or not. But that hesitant step when he said he’d defeat Sephiroth tells us all we need to know that she wishes it didn’t have to be so, and that she know beating Sephiroth is probably best for Cloud’s sake too.
Which brings me to Cloud; as it is we can’t for sure tell whether he’s in some form of denial or not, but he definitely sees her spirit. The question is whether he’s in denial or if he actually knows he’s seeing her lifestream ghost. He could have realized that she has returned to the lifestream as they had been talking about quite a lot in the last two chapters. Which would explain why he’s not surprised she can’t come with them, since she can’t follow them where there’s less lifestream. We’ll have to wait until part 3 to see if the way he talks about her reveals his state of mind there.