I really love Final Fantasy 7. What I think is play the original first, try to keep in mind the year that they made the game, then play the remake.

The remake is half fan-service and half commentary and it doesn’t make total sense without having played the original in my opinion. I’m not sure if it is even a good game, I liked it, but it’s strange as it has merit on a different dimension outside good and bad video game. Much like how the last two episodes of Evangelion are bad anime but are great within context/meta.

Ignore Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, they provide no meaningful insight or lore to the game in my opinion. At worse they destroy the good world building set up by the original game.

The movie Advent Children is harmless in my opinion, it’s stupid but sometimes realistically depicts what the characters may be feeling after the events of the game.