Great topic! Combat is the thing in this game I love without any controversy, hesitation, or cynicism. Love love love.
Cloud: My favorite moves of Cloud's are just his basic attacks, particularly the penultimate swing of his full Operator Mode combo (the one where the heavy sword makes him 180 before throwing his whole weight into it).
Barret: Nothing beats
Overcharge for me. Boom-boom-boom-boom----
BOOOM!
Tifa: I love
Rise and Fall. There's something so graceful about it. It actually took me a long time to realize that Tifa's triangle moves increase the Stagger %, because I was so focused on building them up and lettin' er rip.
Omnistrike is also pretty.... striking
As with overcharge, the play between pause and action, tableau and movement, is mesmerizing. Having Tifa shoulder-check an entire mob of enemies
to death is lmao. The sound samples of Tifa's moves are also all great - I particularly love the machine-gun pop of
Overpower.
Aeris: I honestly didn't really use Aeris that much. I didn't like her flower spells nor the tinkerbell, nor her triangle ability. I found them useful in Hard Mode, but I didn't use them once in Normal and am still not a fan. I mostly used her as a mage/thief, so I guess my favorite move of hers is
Steal. The way she grabs objects out of the air is pretty cool. I like her basic attacks as well.