I actually
enjoyed watching this animation
(well, what does that make of me, now?)
Although, to be fair, maybe I enjoyed it because I didn't really treat it
as a movie, and what I mostly liked was the awesome visuals of a world and the characters "we all know and love". Graphics can deliver tasty bits of story here and there, and this animation had quite a few of these (all the details put in the decoration of the new 7th Heaven, for instance).
Regarding the fighting scenes: while I agree they're too long, I don't mind the fact that they're "over the top" because they're in line with "superhero movie fighting scenes", in my opinion. If I had to go for realism here, there would hardly be any room for the Buster Sword to begin with.
However, I can understand how DLPB gave it a 2. I appreciate that it's mostly a CG fest with little substance. It has no sensible plot, and the fact that it was originally a 15 min CG demo which Square's executives decided to transform into a movie shows a bit too much. My main gripe with the "story" is that Cloud's state nullifies his whole character arc from the game. "Conflicts" were created out of the blue in order to drive a story, and these were poorly written and executed. It actually gives the feel of an "official bad fanfic" :S