I liked VII(7) as it was the one I played as a young kid (on PC, actually). A lot of the modern culture has ruined it now, with their excessive fansites and fanfiction, triggering multiple sequels and movies that pretty much absorb the unwanted culture into the medium itself...
If you ever actually played through, you find Cloud isn't NEARLY the emo, untalkative person he becomes in the later games/movies. He's just like that once in a while in cutscenes, often because CGI animation was too cheap to give deeply expressive faces. Cloud freely makes jokes at times, gets caught up in really weird situations (like having to dress up as a woman to get inside somewhere), etc.
And let's not forget even if you don't like him, there's still Cid, who pretty much makes up for everyone else's character flaws.
Finally, I guess a lot of FF games are like this, but it was one of the longest games I played, plus had plenty of sidequests. I sort of feel like in this day and age, with the number of 30-man teams required to get one side character animated in a cutscene, there's just no way to make a game over 4-6 hours.
