Speaking seriously, Cleave is a joke of a feat and Rogues are in the hole whether you go Dex or Str. There's no easy indication of what is and isn't powerful, but you don't honestly need to know unless your whole group does, in which case they can show you.
And now my joke response: There's no such thing as essential feats you filthy powergamer, I saw a single classed Rogue one-shot a balor at level 3, you just play them wrong, you're ruining pathfinder.
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You might find this to be a useful resource: link.
That said, people do like to exaggerate. Also, many GMs in home games are okay with a bit of rebuilding if it turns out you enjoy the personality/story of a character but not the mechanical choices you've made. In Pathfinder Society, rebuilding is also allowed in several ways.
So even if you made a poor choice, there's ways to improve on it.
Only essential feat I can think of is Raging Vitality for barbarians. Without it, too easy to die if ever brought into negatives while raging.
Rogues can get finesse as a talent. I would assume that's why it's assumed.
Um, actually, Cleave isn't a bad feat at all for fighter. You can get yourself a bonus attack in certain situations before your first iterative, then train it out once you actually get iteratives. It's not good throughout your whole career, but you can do worse for the first 5 levels.
But as to your general question, you can check out those guides, and just pay attention to the discussion on the boards. You'll see conflicting information (as you've already seen in this post) but at least get multiple points of view on things.
No one just knows all this stuff instinctively. If people think of it as "common knowledge," that is only because they've been reviewing the resources already mentioned, or they're bringing system mastery over from 3.5 D&D, which can actually trip you up sometimes by assuming there aren't any differences.
Power attack on a raging barb two handing a greatsword mean 1 hit to kill a lot of stuff.
How are you getting your stats for your character? Getting an 18 or 20 to your hitting stat and some boost like weapon focus or rage gives you an impressive hitting chance.
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Add to that the fact that our GM regularly throws APL+3 or APL+4 encounters at us (which we only survive due to his GMPC essentially carrying the rest of the team, either through super-optimised damage or other shenanigans), and I think you understand why having 2 or 3 feats that you never actually use isn't such an exciting prospect.
Here's your problem. APL+3 or +4 encounters are supposed to be "epic" - very rare and/or occurring in a game with a higher power level (stats/wealth/optimization). New players in particular should not be faced with them "regularly." If you are having difficulty due to lack of familiarity with the rules, your GM should be taking it down a notch so that you have a chance to try things out. And if he's experienced enough to optimize his GMPC he should be able to at least make a few suggestions to help you improve your own builds.
Also keep in mind that many build recommendations are based on typical play. For example, Power Attack is useful for a two-handed weapon style assuming that your chance to hit most opponents falls within a certain range. If you're always fighting enemies with unusually high AC (thanks to being CR 6 when you are level 3) it will be less good. Some options can also be better or worse depending on what your party looks like and how much wealth you have compared to the standard.
Power Attack is generally considered a good feat because of the reasons listed, and also because there are a lot more ways to pump your attack roll than your damage roll. You will find yourself missing a lot at lower levels, particularly if your DM doesn't understand the encounter building rules, as weirdo referenced above. But more particularly, it seems like your DM doesn't understand the rule that the game is about the players, and they don't want to be dragged around by the DM's superhero :)
The core rulebook has plenty of rules to be effective and have fun. There's some cool stuff not in there, but if you're still getting to know the system, what's good and what's not, it's a decent idea to limit your options. Maybe go Core and APG, but don't just use anything under the SRD sun if you aren't comfortable with what most people consider the "basics."
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2oxbs?Best-feat-ever
Some good opinions in that thread.
Somewhere there is a thread where Evil Lincoln (I think) rated all the feats.
But yeah, how you make a character depends what you want to do.
I should warn you, "optimized" playing often means lots of anti-climatic "rocket tag" encounters, and enforces a fairly limited amount of options. And no matter what you do, if your GM just wants to one-up your character with his monsters and DMPC, he can just do that. Hopefully your GM is just learning to balance his encounters, (a fine art), and things will improve as time goes on.