Can you be Overated and Underated at the same time?

[RedPouch]

The easiest example to think about is both the fact that Sephiroth is controlling Jenova with his mind and thus the "Sephiroth" you keep following is actually just Jenova. It seems somewhat obvious but the game never clearly states that's what's really going on. The fact the forum still gets fans who needs this explained to them is evidence it was not properly explained.

It's true. When I first went through this game, I was completely confused about the "Sephiroth" that was walking around. Then I find out that he's been in the Northern Crater for the past several years despite the fact that you're following what appears to be him. I also didn't understand the random Jenova fights throughout the entire game. I had a hard time distinguishing if they were just replicates of Jenova or if every time you fight her, she just kept "coming back to life" more powerful than before.

The other is the deal with the Sephiroth clones. The term clones is somewhat misleading, giving the impression from the dialogue that Cloud was made in a test tube (which is only half true) and the game really gives no thorough translation for what the Reunion/Clone experiment really is. The PSX version's explanation is rather vague and can be interpreted in many ways from its actual meaning. I don't think I caught the fact that the Sephiroth "clones" featured in the game were actually the survivors of the Nibelheim incident until a few years later cause I believe Hojo only mentioned it once.

I was confused in this same manner when I first went through the game as well. I certainly didn't know that the Nibelheim survivors were "turned into" Sephiroth clones my first time going through. I only went through the game once, however it's pretty clear that if so many things are confusing and unclear after completing the game [with many fans], you can conclude that either the translation were poor, or the effort of the developers to convey the story through the game was poor.

Were it not for the fact that I read a "misconceptions" document a few years ago [which I think was just a summarized version of the Ultimania], I would never have understood any of this stuff. Of course, after learning it, now the game makes sense to me. But not every fan is going to know that there's such information out there that can clarify all of this, and from what I understand, most fans end up never learning about these things as Wolf Kanno said. It's ultimately the responsibility of poor translation and/or effort to convey the story on the developer's part, which is unacceptable to me. Even though FF VII is an old game, they still had 6 games prior to the Final Fantasy series alone to learn from their mistakes [not including other games they did as well, such as Chrono Trigger, etc.].

The PSX version has a pretty bad translation/localization. I hear the PC version released later cleared all this up though.

It did. I don't know very many people that actually have the PC version, though.

Final Fantasy VII is still a really great game which I really appreciate for its entirety. I admit that I really, really enjoyed this game a lot. I am trying to not let my appreciation for it be ruined by all the debate and nonsense coming from the Compilation, nor by unreasonable die-hard fans.