I'm glad to hear you've been looking up what a disaster Cloud is! This remake only covers the first part of the original game, unfortunately, so we won't see exactly how it deals with Cloud's backstory until future instalments, but I'm delighted that it's got all these allusions to what's going on inside this absolute mess of a man.

Nice! A sweet character can be good, but pure becomes very tedious characterization very quickly.

Exactly! Aerith is definitely good and definitely not pure, but there's a common misconception of her character in the fandom (half based on certain spoilers and possibly just half based on the fact she wears a pink dress), and I feel that misconception ended up influencing later official material. I'm glad Square's gone back to writing her as I remember her in the original game.