No kidding. I remember being put off because of the shift to pokey, 3-D graphics at the time, but it was the enduring fanboy hype that's made my skin crawl since then.
I've come to think of FFVII as the RPG genre's equivalent to Titanic, with Lenny DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Both from around the same late 90s period, both solid works in their own right, but the overkill in terms of hype and fandom just kills it for me.