Much as I love Zack, he always struck me as a bit of a simpleton - more brawn than brains. So the price he was talking about might as well be that paid in other people's blood, rather than his own.

I mean, I always thought dying doesn't make much sense as the 'price of freedom ' he didn't go into that fight *intending* to die, he just knew he might. But I tend to think that, not having amnesia in the way and not being as naturally good at anger as Cloud, killing Shinra troops has to bother him. He seems dumb and shallow a lot, but he isn't always. Zack is in a weird place where his experience of pain and guilt is central to his own arc, but from outside those points in his storyline he's expected to be reliably upbeat, and it's really hard to tell how seriously he's going to have thought through any specific thing, or how much a given death is going to shake him. Because they're trying to take his and Cloud's freedom away. He used to be one of them, and Cloud did, and they were both good kids, and watching his people die fighting terrorists and monsters was the worst thing back then-but he still kills them.

And Zack's final battle in Crisis Core is just-he knows his opponents aren't evil. Fighting the Wutai War doesn't make a villain of Angeal even though it was an evil war.

Fighting for Shinra doesn't make all the people Cloud kills over the course of the game evil.

The price is steep download