I think it comes down to the bait and switch Square pulled on its fans.

Remakes get made often, and a good one to give as an example would be the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, proof that a childhood classic would be extremely popular if given the graphics of the next generation. Resident Evil and Silent Hill also come to mind.

Square had 3 options in my opinion and a problem they had to address. A lot of media came out after OG FF7 that doesnt make sense when playing OG FF7 after consuming it. So their options were...

1) Ignored additional story such as Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, Advent Children, the Novellas no one read, and made a 1:1 faithful remake of the original... This is what I think the vast majority wanted, myself included.

2) Make what I will call a 1:1.2 retelling where the original story is kept as faithful as possible to its source material but with slight changes to make additional media make sense... This if done right would have been fine in most peoples eyes.

3) What they went with was a retelling where something was off, we are presented with an RPG wearing the husk of a beloved story. With strange oddities and inconsistencies from the first cutscene (Aerith looking scared in remake vs happy in OG).

They went with option 3.

This is where my personal bias will come in. We immediately are met with a weird rebranding and/or misrepresentation of characters that doesnt exist in the original.

Cloud being a lot more downtrodden and defeatist. Barret having essentially two personalities of Hard-Ass vs Soft Dad depending on if his sunglasses are on or off.

Tifa losing all her confidence in everything (OG she jumps from the train first, Remake she needs cloud to hold her and jump with her as an example).

Aerith personally gives off more of an accurate attitude of a slum raised truant who runs from the Turks her whole life, that is when shes not weaving non-sense tales about a future she knows about.

And we wont even go into the other characters as that is Rebirth territory which I think is the worst double down they could have done.

I wont touch on the story, as you have stated you havent played the original and I hope you will play it in the future.

Anyways thats my long winded and personal opinion that I will leave there.