There is more to it, than just choosing class and values for your party. I also like to choose names and imagine personalities for them and assigning classes based on that. A story affects this. But that is a little issue, you are right the basic gameplay-value of being able to create your own party doesn't necessarily stands in the way of a story. It takes more effort. But there are more things. Most might be possible to solve I think, but it is probably a lot harder to make a game with proper story and working detailed gameplay mechanics. So I would prefer two different games than one trying to mix both and failing at that.

EDIT: Bravely Default is by the way a game that gives you the characters, but still allows to build them as you like through reclassing.

Well no because technically HyWa and OPPW sold worse than the PS2 games. And we cant count HyWa because its 8th gen not 7th gen. It needs to outpreform an 8th gen mainline game which is yet to really exist. Hopefully We get DW9 exclusively on 8th gen in 2016.

That's my point, nowadays the labeled Warriors seem to sell better. Anyways, it is sad to see how much of it's sales the Warriors-series lost since PS2. Not really understandable, as it isn't a worse game today and I also don't see the game which has taken over the userbase.

I doubt much japanese oriented games will be 8th gen exclusive on home-console in 2015, but 2016 might be possible, depending on how well the PS4 sells next year in Japan.

Another Shin Megami Tensei game?
I NEED THIS..... NOW

Looked at the year and removed mobile games and remasters

There's less than a million Musou fans. Plain and simple.

How can you measure it?

Consistent sales under or around a million. If you want to say that everyone that buys a game is a fan of the IP, and a single game selling over a million means there's a million fans forever, go right ahead. You'd be wrong. Number of fans change over time, and not everyone who buys a game is a fan. Hell, even ktay is saying that Hyrule Warriors fans aren't all Musou fans, point in case. But not even games that don't borrow from other IPs sell only to fans of a series. Some people just buy a game because they want to try it. Even with generous estimates of fan-to-not-fan ratios in the sales, the likelihood that there are a million people that would call themselves fans of the series is just too low. If you genuinely believe that, then I'm sorry to say the evidence simply doesn't support it.

Lol, okay, so OPPW selling 1/2 the copies of the best selling game on 1/2 the userbase of it's platform means it's selling worse, despite the fact that it's the best selling Musou game in Europe, and sold 3/4 of the best selling game in Japan on less than half the userbase. That's to say nothing of Hyrule Warriors which sold a 1/4 of the best selling PS2 game on less than 1/20, yes that's less than one twentieth of the PS2 userbase. Oh, but we can't count Hyrule Warriors because it's 8th gen, but we can count the PS2 games which are 6th gen?

Shirley you're kidding.