Finished this the other night and I've had some time to digest it. I don't want to re-litigate some of the more contentious plot elements that have already been discussed in this thread - some of those points I agree with and some I don't - but I will say that I felt the ending was a bit limp. While I think it makes a kind of logical sense, a cohesiveness if I'm considering what was on display the prior 50-ish hours, it didn't actually feel correct. Which is to say, Clive's death, although not shown on-screen, is strongly suggested and it felt strangely out of tune. For that matter, I think the entire ending sequence - ending scenes, credits, post-credits scene -is strangely out of tune.
Having said that, I haven't had this much fun with a Final Fantasy from start to finish since probably FF10. Characters, story, combat, systems, etc. all landed for me. And the music especially, which is probably the most important factor in determining a game's relative value to me. If there's a bangin' soundtrack, I will forgive a lot (not that I feel much needs to be forgiven here). I do think that the overall narrative starts to fray somewhere around the 75% mark but this is hardly unique for a FF game, and certainly not enough to lessen my opinion of it.
I'm not ready to jump into Final Fantasy mode just yet but I do find myself wanting to play more of it, which is no faint praise since it is exceedingly rare for me to feel the urge to continue playing a game once credits have rolled.