Imagine my surprise when a few years later I managed to play the OG and found it WASN'T even a love story, and looked into it again and found Cloti likely was canon. Since then I've been way too invested in the LTD because I feel angry that Clerith's used fake quotes and misleading information to misrepresent the entire story to a new fan just for their shipping purpose.
I have the same experience with you. I started looking into FF7 when the AC was released. But that time, I really don't think Cloti are couple. I also feel very clueless about their relationship, because AC gave me the feeling that there was always a girl living in Cloud mind and made him and Tifa suffer, not be able to move on. I simply just felt Tifa was a badass sweetheart girl. That was the moment when I started liking Tifa. But I was not in this LTD probably because I was too small to get access to the internet.
Then CC released, afterwards I played OG. After OG, I developed the feeling that I really dislike AC after I saw Tifa was so dedicated to Cloud in OG so as the novel On the way to smile, which makes me a Cloti stan. I want Tifa has a real family! She deserves it, because other than death, what else has she not lost? I think OG is a good story because two girls serve different purpose of the main story line. Cloti is part of the main story to me, Tifa is resolved mainly around Cloud character development while Aerith is for the main story of the FF7 world. It just doesn't make sense to me that Clerith should be further developed. I mean you can prefer Clerith since most of people think they have complementary character which cloud be a perfect fit. But I think Clerith should not be served as part of the main story line, it just lows down Aerith as a great character.
ACC kind of makes me relieved a little bit but I still think it is still a depressing movie for a Cloti, I have mix feeling on it. Then I got noticed about this LTD, and I expressed the my feeling that I think after ACC they would be together and I could remember clearly there was a clerith fan, he literally told me Cloud and Tifa are exactly the same as Barret and Tifa relationship, they live together, take care of child, that's it. I was very annoyed, even nowadays, I can see people ship Barret x Tifa to disapprove Cloti so as to prove Clerith.
Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, please pardon me if I said sth not make sense.