It's been almost a decade since that first playthrough so my memory of it is really fuzzy.  It took some thought just to remember that pipe incident.

Junon had a few of doors I didn't realize were doors the first time around.  I missed a bunch of stuff due to that.

I seem to recall the glacier being the source of some confusion on that first playthrough, but not so much why.

These aren't major downsides of the game, I agree.  They're just minor points of annoyance.

Heck, I was more annoyed with FFX's turning Bahmut into a brightly colored... thing than the entirety of those minor graphical annoyances in FFVII.

you remember that if you pushed the 'select' button you got pointers to tell you were all the doors and exits are? of course also in Junon and the glacier you mention, so if you just would have done that, you wouldn't even had those minor problems with doors and exits.. (but since when should rpgs not require some exploring and trial anyway? eventhough with FFVII the developers give you that 'select-button' option to make it real easy)

I also remember areas where they didn't work. ^_^

And the need to have giant green/red arrows over stuff because you can't tell from the actual images is a bad sign.

I've was more annoyed that Bahamut get's no respect in Crisis Core as you finish him, if I recall well, while you aren't even a SOLDIER 1st Class yet.. now that's dissrespecting the King of Dragons..

well it sure worked in Junon and the glacier though Wisdom :P

That's depressing, I really like Bahamut too.  He was really cool in pretty much every Final Fantasy game prior to X.   

actually you could tell where the doors are in Junon Wisdom.. cause you actually SEE doors, and some times there are even civillians standing in front of them that mention those shops or walk into them before or after you talk to them, but this is really going too far in complaining about stuff that's almost uncomplainable in the context of the game being so good.. :P

I own the not so great PC version of FFVII so a remake would probably be the only way I'm going to play through it again.

but I'm sure you also have that opinion, like you just said, that it's really minor this stuff..

To the contrary, there was ONE guy standing outside a door that he immediately went into IIRC.