@WoW

Only if you like bald guys with suits and sunglasses :P They looked like secret agents lol.

No I've just get tired of writing a veritable novel each time some fanboy touts how great Final Fantasy VII is. As Garcian stated, I get tired typing out a point by point analysis to a post with little value to begin with. Blatent flamebait? Your original post practically insulted anyone with a differing opinion. You may want to look in the mirror. All that stated, I guess I can do an abbrievated run down of why Final Fantasy VII continues to be the most overrated game of all time.

Graphics

Final Fantasy VII's graphics were poor even at the time of release. It followed the CG background/polygonal character style presentation that RE made famous but it just did it poorly. The characters were low poly and lacked detail. The whole point of the static backgrounds was to render more detailed characters. The best part of the in-game graphics was the battle scene graphics and they lacked detail while running at a blistering 15fps. Even SCEA knew the graphics were poor because the games advertisments showed endless amounts of FMV.

I'll agree with the polygonal character forms.  But other than that and the world map, the background textures of each area in FF7 was done very nicely.  Take a closer look at the amount of detail done in the slums, Coral, City of the Ancients, and Wutai.  Also, the detail in the in-game battles were bad?  I really don't see how you came to this conclusion, the summons look very stunning, you can see parts of the characters like their belt buckles, raggedy jackets, very clear facial features.  Then there's the multiple different camera angles that give a different shot of them attacking.

Audio

Despite the move to CD, Final Fantasy VII's audio quality was inferior to that of Final Fantasy VI. I don't know how they managed to have a lower sampling rate on the MIDI toons of FFVII but they did. Even the hype filled reviews from 1997 remake on this. You think they could find the space for some redbook audio on a multiple CD game. There is no excuse for a 3Mb cartridge title to have better music than a 3 CD game.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Final Fantasy VII not only awful, it was insulting. The party size was reduced from four to three and each characters individual skills were identical outside of their limit breaks. The materia system allowed the strongest melee characters, Cloud for example, to wield the best magic spells and made putting any character with caster friendly stats in the party pointless. The Esper system of FFVI was similar but each characters had unique abilities. You had to build you party around each characters strengths and that allowed for some actual strategy to take place during battles. Not to mention the equipment system was reduce to just a weapon, a bangle, and an accessory.

More quantity =/= more quality. I already discussed this as this is just a taste of different jrpg gamers.  Their skills could be switched and made to the players own liking as opposed to being forced to use characters you might not want to use like in FFVI.  The battle system was the major focus as opposed to the characters in FF7.  But don't quote me on this, look at one of my other posts to get the full enchalada. 

Story

Final Fantasy VII's story was a joke. Tifa knew that Cloud was lying from the beginning of the game. Yet she didn't tell Barrett or Avalanche about it. Why she risk the lives of all of her comrades by putting them in the hands of Cloud. She knew he was unstable, but she didn't tell anyone. That makes no sense what so ever. Sephiroth's reasons for going "psycho" were weak at best. He read about how he was implanted with Jenova cells in the womb....so what. His mother, Lucretia, was still alive. His attachment to Jenova made no sense at all. Not to mention the various points in which he "controls" Cloud. Whether it be him standing there like a doofus when Aerith gets run through, assaulting Aerith, giving Sephiroth the black materia. Cloud wasn't actually a clone of Sephirothh so him being controlled by him made little sense. I am not going even get into how he manages to survive Mako poisoning twice or he magically recovers right after Zack is gunned down by the Shinra.

Tifa not telling Cloud and the others about that whole ordeal isn't a negative or positive quality to the FF7 story.  Plus if you delved deeper, you'd know why she didn't tell.  Because of her feelings for Cloud, what might happen to him if she did tell because of what Cloud thinks he knows about himself.  Cloud already lead the party through dangerous places and they all managed to accomplish their goals several times. 

About Sephiroth:  He didn't know who his real mother was, all he knew or thought he knew was that he was made from Jenova.  The reason he controls Cloud from time to time is to show Cloud who he really is, which Tifa didn't want to tell him.  He wanted to toy with Cloud because he saw this.  Btw, Cloud IS a clone of Sephiroth.  He was a failed experiment, but he was the only one to succeed as a Sephiroth Clone.  Cloud wasn't born like Sephiroth, but he was still a clone of him because he was injected with Jenova cells.     

Miscellaneous

SCEA actually spoils the biggest surprise in the game, Aerith's death, in the FMV filled ad campaign that launched the game.

@Xen

lol. FF IX > FF VII in every way. Music, characters, battle system, villains, etc. were MUCH better than FF VII.

@WoW

Only if you like bald guys with suits and sunglasses :P They looked like secret agents lol.

OK, I like this...

Nomuras take on Zidane is so much worse than the original.

Same with Cloud.  A sword wrapped in tape/bandages is stupid no matter how you try to rationalize it.

OK, I agree the guage takes forever to load up but besides that FF IX had a better battle system.

@WoW

Rude IS awesome :) He's the only Turk I like.

@vdoesnt

Fail. That Zidane is awesome. He looks like the old one a lot in the actual game though. I still really love the art. But lol at Nomura's trademark belt-'n'-zippers on Zidane though.