No. The basic facts of the storyline are a bit hard to follow, but everything is explained fairly clearly if you know what to look for. You may need to replay the game at least at least until Aeris’s death to get the full history of Cloud.
Cloud is just a guy that grew up with Tifa. Nothing interesting about him until he started getting experimented on by Shinra. The experimentation gave him powers he didn’t have before but also warped his mind. Cloud’s personality was mixed up so thoroughly with his teammate Zack’s that he forgot who he was.
Part of the storyline has Sephiroth trying to control Cloud through Zack. It’s part of Cloud’s character development to regain control over both his body and his identity.
Stories are hard to tell in videogame format because the ‘reader’ gets more interested in the game than in following events. There are any number of better vehicles for the story of that game than a role-playing game, but Square makes role-playing games, so FF7 had to be a role-playing game.