Val on the problem with the ending of Ao no Kiseki

The ending of chapter 4 up to the confrontation on the tower is the most exciting part of Ao.
Then you reach the top of the tower, and the game completely falls a part.
Ao ending Dieter starts spouting "justice" nonsense (wow, what a way to kill a somewhat interesting character) and it's revealed that the big, powerful government you were fighting against wasn't the end villains, but actually just two guys and girl. It's incredibly underwhelming. And then you actually confront those three people, and the story falls flat on its face. The Lloyd-Arios conflict is anti-climatically resolved as Arios did not kill Guy. Arios is absolved of guilty and Lloyd does not have to struggle with dealing with him. Ian is barely acknowledged at all, and when Lloyd confronts him Guy barely factors into it, and it basically boils down to:
Lloyd: "Ian, you're sure about this!"
Ian: "Yes..."
Lloyd: "Are you sure???"
Ian: "No...."
Worst is the final boss, pulled out of thin air for no other reason to end the game with a god monster to fight, but hey, maybe at least there will be some consequences from this. NOPE! Even though you literally beat the god monster to death, the girl inexplicably survives (and is even purified of the plot mcguffin that made her a target in the first place). And then, most egregiously, Mariabell just walks away like it was nothing. She goes "oh, you tore down my family's project that they had been building up for hundreds of years, a plan that would have saved Crossbell and untold thousands of people? Nah, I don't care. I'm going with Ouroboros k thx bye!". To add insult to injury, the cast doesn't even chastize her for her crimes. In fact, Ellie is tearing up that Mariabell is leaving! Mariabell is guilty of everything Joachim committed and worse (let's see: the puppet master being the cult that kidnapped, experimented on, scarred, and killed children, conspirator in a government takeover of Crossbell state, conspirator who brought in Ouroboros' Aions to launch an unprovoked attack on Erebonia and Calvard, killing hundreds, straight up tries to murder the heroes, forces a ten year old little girl to ascend into a god monster and kill her friends...), but since she's a cute girl with boobs the party doesn't hold her to any level of accountability whatsoever, and even CRY when they here she is leaving.

The worst thing about the ending is that the SSS didn't develop as people. At the end of Ao, Lloyd is the exact same character he was at the beginning of Zero. His character development amounted to... um...

They had the perfect set up right there! They could have had the SSS struggle with the idea that the power to create a perfect reality laid right in front of them! With the snap of their fingers, the world could be recreated so that Crossbell wasn't the pawn of the Republic and the Empire, so that Crossbell wasn't corrupted (or so we're told, we're not shown much corruption over the course of the two games). A world where Guy and Saya didn't die. A world where Ellie's parents didn't separate and she had a happy family. A world where Tio wasn't kidnapped and experimented upon, and still lived a happy life with her parents. A world where Randy didn't become a child soldier. Except the protagonists just brush that all aside and make a nonsensical "we mustn't change the timeline for the sake of those who struggled" statement, which is contradictory to their prior mission of trying to bring happiness to the world.

The antagonists have found a way to recreate the timeline however they wish. Their aim is to change events so that everyone gets a happily ever after ending. They killed hundreds of people in pursuit of this goal, but now those deaths are irrelevant as they can now recreate the timeline so that none of those people died in the first place. Sure, Ian killed Guy when Guy was on to their plan, but that doesn't matter anymore as they can recreate the timeline so Guy is still alive anyways. (though if the SSS rejects Ian's plan, then Guy remains dead and Ian is still culpable... except Lloyd isn't even mad at Ian...). There is no arguement against consequentialism here because there are no consequences. The protagonists somehow still rationalize the antagonist's plans as a bad thing, even after their plan having been proven to work. Lloyd says that "we can't change time because it'd ruin the value of how we live our lives", and the rest of the party somehow agrees with this? This is hypocritical, as the protagonists are only alive because the antagonists manipulated the timeline so the heroes would live (the heroes died in the original timeline). If Lloyd were to put his money where his mouth was, he'd advocated for that timeline be reverted to the original, which would mean their deaths. But no, he's a hypocrite who unitalterally decides that it's alright for the timeline to be changed to bring him back to life, but it can't be changed for anyone else. Worse, the SSS go on to whine in the next arc about how they're being oppressed... when they are experiencing a ludicrously tame Disney occupation actual occupied countries would be envious of (in fact, under Rufus, the city actually got better! He exorcised the corruption that the SSS couldn't). Furthermore, they were given a chance to prevent the occupation and they declined it. Don't turn around and start whining now.

As for the "but, uh, they'd be using a little girl!" argument, just think. The Aureole - the treasure of space - could change  your freaking brain chemistry to make you feel better. And KeA has the powers of Time, Space, and Mirage. She can literally THINK to herself "be happy!" and it'd happen. It's a false dilemma folks. The game does not define any limit for the Sept-Terrion of Zero's power... which makes the defeat of the Azure-Arbitrator, an apparent god, at the hands of few puny mortals, all the more inexplicable (though the game dropped any pretense of trying to maintain any form of logic long ago). The Reverie and the Testa-Rossa were grounded opponents whose defeats were truly impressive because we could define how powerful they were. In both cases, they were physically strong robots with a near impentrable Zemurian-Ore armor that could only be broken through by the application of a strong Aura/Qi technique that could only be used by the strongest characters in the setting, or by the Zemurian-Ore weapons wielded by similar robots. Thus, unable to defeat those robots on foot outright, the protagonist's triumph came from managing to intercept the robot before it could escape the dungeon and tear into the civilians in the city, and enduring the grueling battle. They're only scratching the robot, and their draining themselves of their energy as they dodge and parry its attacks. Eventually they're going to mess up and die, so it's truly impressive that they managed to survive long enough for their secret weapon to arrive and save the day. In contrast, the straight up fleshy god monsters that the party fight in SC, 3rd, Zero, and ESPECIALLY Ao are so abstract in their capabilities that their defeat isn't impressive at all. Especially so in Ao's case, as if KeA can straight up rewrite the timeline or warp reality, than all the Azure Arbitrator needed to do was to warp Lloyd and friends into an jail of rock or rewrite the timeline so they never ended up in that exact same situation. This then creates even more ludicrous excuses like "but, uh, she was holding back!", which if actually believe that, even further diminishes the Azure Arbitrator's defeat, let alone the logic.