"I love monsters and it's a big part of why I love/get him)"
And that's exactly why your, and a big part of the fandom's, understanding of him is skewed. From the very original, he was always meant as a fallen, tragic hero. Each game has been building on that concept and showing him more and more as human, showing the tragedy of his fall. It's not woobification, it's driving across the point that some people just don't want to get because monsters are cool or hot or something.
Pretty much every point has already been discussed in the replies, so I'll try to be brief. He was a very good person! It's easy being good when your life is easy enough and you can afford (financially, emotionally, in terms of time and effort) to be kind, and yet... most people aren't! Most people are just trying to get by, be good to their families (if that much), maybe to their community. How many truly completely selfless people do you know? (And are you sure their brand of goodness registers as such to everyone else, especially from other cultures?) He is/was good because he was raised in a way that would have psychologically destroyed any real child, with completely twisted notions about the world, dehumanised and brutalised to become a killing machine. And yet, it only took a tiny bit of normal human interaction for him to truly want to be compassionate and kind. A tiny bit, and he held on to that for as long as he could despite the circumstances of his tragic life. Oh, but genocide of children and all that... The game doesn't throw everything in your face, but it's there. He gets hurt, because he hesitated! Because despite being taught that children are soldiers just like him and old people are experienced, he hesitated! They did attack him (no doubt trying to defend themselves), which led him to believe what he was taught was right... and he still hesitated enough to let them land that blow. This was hours, if that much, after a life constant indoctrination!
As for being a hero... he also was. Not because of Shinra's propaganda, but because he believed it was his duty to protect! From the very first time with Glenn and Co, he says the duty of a leader is to protect his men. And then he goes on always doing it, always leading from the front, in the Wutai incident giving it all to protect the soldiers (and possibly the civilians) who wouldn't have stood a chance without him. I can assure you that's not what officers are taught in any military in the world! Oh, but colonialism and stuff... Are you aware there are canonically Wutaians who did want Shinra and the reactors? Life and politics are complicated and they seem to be too in the game. It's hard to tell exactly how much he's aware of what's real at that point and what is propaganda, but doesn't detract one bit from him fighting wave after wave of monsters to protect others. Are there any heroes in your world? If someone goes into a burning house, risking their life, to save their neighbour’s kids and bed ridden grandma and then turns out to be cheating on their spouse, does that make saving the kids any less heroic?
The Nibelheim fall from grace is not him finally showing what he always was, it's the result of a life of abuse, lies, manipulation, and the breaking of the only thing still holding him together, the notion that he was different, but human. It's the last blow in having everything he was destroyed from the very moment he was born. With a huge help from an alien monster that was always right there, under the surface.
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