So I pop it in the day I get it, and these polygonal figures jump off a train and I think, "Hey this is kinda cool!"
Then I spend the next seven or eight hours of game time in the same damned city, never seeing the light of day. And once I get out, its another 30 hours or so before I can get back in, spending all that time going form place to place without ever accomplishing much other than learning there's something called Jenova that might be controlling Sephiroth. Oh, and Barrett can't keep a train from leveling his hovel of a hometown.
FF7's greatest flaw is a terribly uncomplex plot (just follow Sephiroth around the world and hope something good happens along the way) that stretches out about 30-40 hours longer than it needs to. The simplicity of it could have been compressed into 5-10 hours of gameplay and given you exactly the same game experience. Quite a let down after the masterpieces of 4, 5, and 6. 4 is half as long as 7 and packs many times more story into its experience.
Case in point: the Yuffie-steals-the-materia sidequest. This detour takes 10 times as long as it should and doesn't add anything significant to the story other than to show that Yuffie isn't all bad. And it happens at such a critical part of the story it just derails the only momentum the game has for any extended period of time just prior to this event (from Nifleheim to the Canyon and then up to meeting Cid)
Plus, I don't see what the big whoop is about Aeris dying...
...except that it comes at the hand of Sephiroth. Murder, she wrote.
In any case, what's the big deal? ALL the humans died in the end.
FF8 wanders all over the place without much of a focused plot, too. But not as badly as FF7. Plus ending is much more enjoyable (and one of my all time favorites)