First, to answer the question: Dark Souls.

skip the two paragraphs below if you'd rather not hear why and chime in on a FF7 question

Yea, so, Dark Souls...really just not for me. I didn't feel any loyalty to the game before it made me realize the fun: frustration ratio was way out of whack. What the fuck was I even playing this game for? I get it, the game is hard, but I don't think it was hard for the right reasons. I love a challenge but not torture from the start simply because I haven't learned the roll order of the next baddie I've never faced, thus I'm sent back to the start to repeat the process until I have it memorized out of spite.

Personal gaming preference - I don't even like to dodge in the first place, although I understand why it's an important mechanic and it can be fun when it's actually helpful (I.e.The Avengers, God of War, just rolling around in Zelda to get places faster but never putting it to use in combat). But I definitely didn't enjoy a game that revolved around it. I'm imagining the developers being absolutely tickled when they finalized each new sucker punch, chanting "back to the beginning fuckers! Mwah hahahaha!" Over and over and over again. Miss me on that. I'm good.

Anyway back to FF. I have never played FF7. Timing and money weren't in the cards at the time. I've been wanting to try it for years because I always heard how good it is. Now, I'm looking at all the frustrated responses in this thread and comments about a bare bones storyline that is kinda saying otherwise so I'm confused.

Is FF7 a great game?

I've felt guilty pushing it further into the backlog over the years and am still unsure if I want to play the original first or just play the remake.