We discussed this several pages back, but it is worth bringing up again. The general feeling (at least among the people in the discussion we had) was that the FFVII fanbase is actually two fanbases. You have people that enjoyed the original JRPG and then you have the people that became big fans of Advent Children and the expanded universe, so to speak. There is some overlap between these fanbases but those that do not dwell in both worlds seem to have very different ideas about what was great about Final Fantasy VII.
My contention is that the people that really are loving the Remake are most likely Advent Children fans or not fans of the JRPG; which was also the much larger group as Square shifted the way they made their games to cater to the Advent Children group. In my opinion that group is easier to develop for than JRPG fans because JRPG fans tend to be very picky and vocal about their gameplay elements. The Advent Children fans are more like your typical anime fan; and while anime fans can be way overboard with how vocal they are, they are oftentimes happy enough to simply be getting new content and the overall quality of the video game portion was never what brought them to the show in the first place.
In terms of the game's story changes, I have a lot of problems. But most of my gripes are with the gameplay changes. I get that the gameplay is passable, but it's absolutely not what I want out of a game that claims to be a part of the Final Fantasy series. I want a good, old fashioned JRPG. It's why I've shifted over to Dragon Quest almost exclusively.