FF7's a weird one for me. I played it for the first time in... 2021, maybe? Think I decided to pick it up after Sephiroth got announced for Smash. And at first I thought "OK this is decent, I kinda get what people could see in this if they were 12 years old in 1997"
Then once you're out of Midgar I feel like the whole thing just falls off a cliff and, while it has its moments, never really gets back to the highs of that opening act. IMO the story's poorly told and just not that compelling compared to the eco-terrorist angle they started with, figuring out where you need to go on the world map often feels directionless and uninuitive, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is just kinda mid (esp. compared to other 90s Square RPG).
Now with some more distance, I do feel almost nostalgic for the general vibes of FF7, but I'm still kinda scratching my head and feeling a smidge bitter that that's the 90s Squeenix game that blew up and became the RPG template for decades when Chrono Trigger was right there (I guess that's the power of high production values and Sony marketing?)