The big climax of the floating continent is just, pitch perfect arc ending into huge cliffhanger, to the point that I think media strives for that energy to this day
I dunno about "falls apart" so much as "loses steam and meanders"; the individual scenes are still fantastic but there's no longer an overarching narrative driving them
I know they absolutely used FF6 to test out their 3D rendering before they even finished the SNES game, but that was back when they expected the PSX to be the SNES CD or whatever it would've been
And two of FF7’s characters were entirely optional, though they’ve tried to walk that back bit by bit since the original game where Yuffie or Vincent end up having more and more prominence as time goes on.
Kefka: "On god?"