So I ended up going through all 3 endings and even wrote a walkthrough.
First the Bad End: This ending is not as bad as its name might suggest, at least from a metagaming perspective, as while the story’s conclusion is certainly quite bad you do get access to a bunch of Guild Commissions that are otherwise only available to complete in the True End. Next the Normal End: It’s okay and you can get a couple Items that are normally only found in the True End from the final boss.
Which leaves us with the True End. The path the story takes in this ending is remarkably dark. Quite dark indeed with a surprising amount of death, and whether the goals/conclusion justify that or not is debatable. The most surprising thing about this ending though is that Schwarz has somehow managed to become a decent person.
Funny story:
While on the third playthrough, my PS3’s disk drive decided to start refusing to read disks after I ejected the game once during a freeze. So I was left with a dilemma. Get a new PS3? Turns out they’re still remarkably expensive. Get the PC version? The save data won’t transfer. Fix the drive? I couldn’t find the right tool to open the case. Which left me with: Buy the game digitally from the PS Store and play it directly off the HD… which is what I did. It ended up running a hell of a lot smoother that way too and I never had another freeze.