That's understandable lol. I got a lotta RPGs to play in the meantime. And I cant even run the second remake on my current setup T_T
Giving it a few years before playing remake, that's not really the best advice, if you absolutely loved 7 and find Cloud to be a really intriguing character, I myself found Cloud the most interesting, then you will likely love everything FF7 related except crisis core. Crisis core is the weakest game story wise, it just expands on Zack and I honestly never really liked Zack much as character until rebirth.
Not a spoiler per se, but remake isn't a remake, it's sequel that ties all of the expanded compilation together and actually furthers the original, whilst rethreading it in way that expands on Clouds PTSD but presented it in way I adored, long story short, someone shows up sooner that they should, many, many fans bitched about but it's great, Cloud is revealed tobe an unreliable narrator in the original, these new games expand on that brilliantly, and essentially fix Tifa in terms of her recollection also.
The order I'd suggest would be 7, advent children, dirge of Cerberus, crisis core(unless you don't like Zack then feel free to skip over), then remake and rebirth in that order. Dirge of Cerberus is canonically the last part of the story as of right now, that will likely change with the third game in the new trilogy.
Dirge of Cerberus has gameplay issues as square never made a third person shooter before but the story is great and adds a lot. Crisis core really doesn't add much to the story compared to advent children or dirge, it's honestly just a kid friendly expansion of Zacks story for the PSP, that's it. Played the remake of crisis core recently just to make sure after not liking the PSP one and still doesn't do much for the story even now. I personally enjoyed dirge of Cerberus's gameplay, it's not any worse than most shooters from back then. If you're curious about Hojo and Vincent this is the game that keeps on giving. I don't want to give any spoilers so that's a much as I will say. It's not resident evil 4, but only remake 4 holds a candle to re 4, but the story is great in terms of adding lore.
Kazushige Nojima wrote advent children and the demand from fans for a game that played like advent children essentially, is why we got the "remake" trilogy, so he also made sure to expand on things that he couldn't when making a main line FF game, and he did, much to many, mostly western, fans chagrin. Take the criticism of the new trilogy with a grain of salt, it's mostly bias against it not being a 1:1 remake as the main complaint, essentially it's a sequel that would make no sense to most of them, and has all the FF7 isms that wouldn't fly today tonally, serious to abundantly silly at a moments notice. It is very FF7, even in term of tone and wackiness, just a lot more of it, but also expands things for anyone that loved compilation, which was the only reason these new games now exist. It really couldn't go back to the original 7 anymore after the compilation movie and games, it feels so restricted by the time it came out and being intended for N64 originally. I loved 8 since day 1. 9 is not really the sci-fi FF so I didn't like that much. 6 onwards starting throwing in sci-fi elements and is likely what hurt 16 was the change back to pure fantasy.
I was one of the "played FF7 on release" fans, loved many things about it, thought the overworld character models weren't great though and the story is done a disservice by a not so great translation, this has it's charm for many but not for me, not at the time and definitely not now.
Kazushige Nojima was on of the core writers of the original FF7, but is the main writer of almost everything since the compilations release.
As one of the fans that watched advent children back in 2006 almost on repeat at one point, it made me wish the original was as awesome and I finally have that with the new games but I am honestly unsure if they can be truly enjoyed by newbies or even fans that played the ps1 original that have absolutely no context of the lore expansion across 15 years. They're best enjoyed by having played the original and consumed the compilation beforehand. So fi you love 7 and found cloud interesting and the whole soldier apsect, sephiroth and shinra, Hojo etc. all interesting and want more then go ahead. Whether or not you'll like any more of it depends on why you liked it in the first place
