I’ll just go with Cloud and Tifa, since I haven’t said anything yet. No particular reason. (Too lazy to make an explanation and defend/argue it…)
Tifa and Aeris sounds nice though. 
And I’m with Wil in wondering why she didn’t know Zack was dead sooner. Shouldn’t she know that stuff?
Actually, I don’t recall Aerith actually seeing dead people in FF7. She could sense things but not actually see ghosts. She’s together with him in AC because, well, they’re both dead at once. O_o
There was that one time with her adoptive mother where she sensed her husband had died. But she never manifested that ability at any other time… maybe it was something that only was available to her as a child, when she was “closer” to the Planet?
I always felt that Tseng’s “death” was highly suspect. The law in games and anime is, if you don’t see the body, chances are they’re not really dead. And you’d also think they’d have made a bigger deal of it rather than just killing him off as a side effect of a giant temple shrinking. O_o So that never bothered me.
I got the impression it was more due to being stabbed with a giant sword by a man who’s known to kill, while in a room deep inside it that did for him. I mean seriously, he had to walk/climb/crawl all the way back out from there to the keystone room. Or out through the back door, and around. Either way, it would have taken a longass time, during which he was bleeding. Heavily, I’d say. He was dead.
And to follow up on that note the only entrance/exit to the place was sorta staked out by the main characters themselves til there was nothing left but a crater and some black materia (which sorta makes his disappearing act all the more suspect if you ask me). Plus it’s kinda hard to pull a one man disappearing act when you’re dead (if you ask me the temple was just overkill).
Again - he was stabbed. Lots of people in RPGs and anime are stabbed and totally laugh it off. Cloud also got stabbed by Sephiroth, remember? And that was before any sort of experimentation on him, so he was just a plain old guy at that point.
The main characters weren’t staking out the front; while they were exploring Tseng could easily have walked off after gathering his strength. The shrinkage only happened after they’d already encountered “Sephiroth” and gone out of the temple again.
Cloud was stabbed and almost died, the only reason he survived was that Hojo and his team came along, found him and Zack and nursed them back to health and then (or maybe even during the treatment) did crazy ass experiments on them.
There was also the fact that we never saw him again throughout the game. And the only other time he was mentioned was by a distraught Elena. I haven’t played it in a while, don’t remember exactly what she said. 
In the PS version, Elena says “But you really got guts doin’ my boss in like that!”. Which does make it sound like Tseng was killed.
But I have read that the PC version had a different (apparently more accurate) translation, which makes it sound like he wasn’t killed just injured.
Anyway back to the topic at hand, I much more prefer the Cloud/Tifa pairing myself. Mostly due to the fact that they have more of a history together, and they did seem (at least to me) to be closer during the second half of the game and all.
I’m on the Cloud/Tifa train.
As far as Aeries is concerned, I’ve always thought she was a weak character. Her mysticism is played up a bit as The Last Cetra but beyond that her limit breaks blew ass and she was poor in stats across the board. I was disinclined to include her in my group. Given the kind of game Final Fantasy is I think that characters have to be useful in the in-game situations and not just central to the story. Unfortunately the most interesting parts involving Aeries were dependent upon her being in your party (most notably Gonzaga Village, where Zack was from. If she’s in your party, Aeries interacts with his parents. Since she sucked I can’t really see a lot of people seeing this conversation). Aeries attitude always seemed to borderline on precognition in the sense that she knew there was something inherently special about herself and that she was destined for something. As a result, I feel like her character was designed in the manner of which I have voiced my disapproval - purposefully distant as to avoid the pain of the early demise she seems to see coming. Also, on the seeing dead people front, she didn’t know that Zack was dead because he wasn’t - he was in the pipe. Whether or not he’s dead when you come back (what, like 5 minutes later?) I can’t remember - either way this is a moot point as she never sees dead people (quite the contrary - if you visit the church after she dies, you see dead people (person)) and isn’t “notified” when he dies (if he indeed does, at that point). Cid is quite right in this respect.
I dunno, I really never enjoyed her character and was relatively unaffected by her death.
Aeris’ limits were good for exactly two things:
I was the kind of guy who always spent a lot of time before Junon getting all her limits though, and I did get Great Gospel the normal way. It’s only useful for ONE fight though: Demon Gate.
I also like getting Red XIII’s 3rd level Limits before Junon. Because then when I kill Lost Number, I get Cosmo Memory, which means… Mt Nibel dragon slaying time!
Why Junon? Because in the forests between Junon and Fort Condor, you can fight groups of 5 guys that you can kill all at once with one Choco-Mog, and kill count is how you level up your limits.
neither. Tifa has been a bitch to Cloud for pretty much his entire life, and is most of the reason he’s as fucked up as he is. Aeris… I dunno, she seems like a nice girl, but I never did feel like I got much of a personality from her. Personally, I think that Cloud should be shot through the head in his sleep, just to put him out of his misery.
A OR T?
Common, why not a Ménage à trois ?
Zack was absolutely 100% dead. Check the ending of Crisis Core (and the “hidden” scene which mirrors it in the original game).
Eh. Just throw Cloud in with Sephiroth in a fanfic with more pages than the phone book and more angst than ten teenage vampire novels put together, and call it a day.
Oh, and don’t forget to include a scene where Aeris, powered up with all the strength of all the Cetra who ever lived, beats the living snot out of Sephiroth. That’s right up there with my top twenty fanfiction moments.
Seriously though, I don’t think Cloud is relationship material for anyone, not in-game and definitely not after Advent Children. It’s probably best for everyone involved if he stays single. I’m leaning towards Tifa, but she’d spend her entire life trying to dredge him up from his depressions in between action sequences. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
I’d like to point out that when Tifa met Cloud again, and saw he was in a very, very bad state of mind (being convinced they met more recently than she did, etc.) she got him to join a terrorist organization. And later on, when he told a story that she knew DEFINITELY didn’t add up to what she knew? She didn’t say a thing. Frankly, I don’t think I could trust someone like that, especially when Cloud would be dealing with psychological issues the rest of his life after all that crap, and needs an emotional anchor. Whether she really cares for him or not, she definitely isn;t good for him.
Well, about joining a terrorist organisation, you do have to remember he was a mercenary. It’s not that unreasonable that she’d convince him to do the job he thought was his. Also, I think after the game Cloud would have been fine relationship material. I ignore AC because it just decided to reset his character and take away all development he’d had throughout the game. Hell, they even made it so Jenova/Sephiroth could affect him again. (Yeah yeah, not to the same extent. Still.) So yeah. AC was just an exhibition of cool things with no canonical relevance. That is my stance and I stick to it.
AC didn’t “undo” the character development he had. It reintroduced new issues which ended up with Cloud acting similarly to how he’d done before. Taken from a story point the differences make sense. They’re just not very nice. 
And when was Sephiroth not able to affect him, at least on an emotional level?
The difference between “terrorist” and “freedom fighters” often is which side of history you’re on. Remember AVALANCHE’s headquarters was in Tifa’s bar; she was heavily involved with them, so she obviously felt that their cause was just.
whatever you call it, you’re getting a psychologically disturbed man to go kill possibly hundreds of people. Of course, this is trying to apply real-world psychology to RPG heroes, so it’s flawed, but still.
By the end of Final Fantasy 7 I felt it was pretty clear Cloud had broken the hold Jenova/Sephiroth had over him. 
As for AC, I didn’t think there was anything in there that showed good enough reason for him to revert to his old self. No, I don’t think Geostigma would have affected him that way - as he was at the end of the game. That’s why I said the just decided to hit the undo button on him.
And even if you were to say that there was justification for how he was acting, none of it was ever shown, not even in flashbacks. It was just a case of him going from “Hurray I’m strong enough to stand on my own two feet and help my friends!” to “I’m a whiny git blah blah blah”. there was, as far as we are shown, either directly or indirectly, no between ground. And all the character development in AC essentially just gets him back to how he was at the end of the game - able to stand on his own two feet and be unaffected by Sephiroth.
Note, by ‘affect’, I am referring to influence his actions by asserting the influence of the Jenova cells in Cloud, not by messing with his mind in more mundane ways. Though Cloud was strong enough to get over that, too.
Edit: Val, he was saying he was a cold blooded Mercenary killer who was in SOLDIER! Of course they were going to take advantage of that, he’d be the perfect addition to the team. She knew something was odd at the time, she didn’t quite know what was going on though. She didn’t know the depths of his fucked-upness at that stage.
Cavelcade: It’s funny you say that, because I know EXACTLY how Cloud feels in AC.
When you aim towards a goal, and spend a long time single-mindedly chasing it, once you’ve pinned it down you feel incredibly down. You feel like you’ve lost your reason for living, in a way. I felt that way for a while after a math test I’d spent two weeks cramming for way back in high school. Considering FF7 takes place over a far longer period than that, for far higher stakes, I can understand why Cloud finds himself adrift.
Part of it probably also has to do with the fact that he’s a military sort of person and finds himself stuck in civilian life. Plenty of real-life soldiers have gone through that sort of depression after coming back from war.
There is no indication that this is what happened with him at all though. Throughout the movie we’re just told “This is Cloud. He is depressed and fucked up. Watch him get out of it!”…which is fine, if we hadn’t already watched him do that in the game. And while I can understand why he might feel adrift, he clearly was getting himself into a life. The entire thing was just silly.
Also: Rufus should’ve been dead. I forgot to mention that.