Do Japanese RPGs need good stories?

[Panama]

I've always played JRPGs for the varying and engrossing combat systems, the combat in an RPG is something WRPGs have only started to greatly experiment with now as can be seen with Mass Effect, Witcher 2 and Amalur. Funnily enough they're some of the few WRPGs I greatly enjoy. Fable is another but that's more of a guilty pleasure.

FF12 is the only JRPG which comes to mind with good dialogue and adequate storytelling. That and the FF Tactics PSP got re written in a similar style to FF12s dialogue I believe. Lost Odyssey also has well written segments but these are ancillary to the main quest from what I remember.

I can't pick up Chrono Trigger today without cringing at the story yet it's a classic, that's the beauty of it though. The combat and game design in general is good enough to keep me immersed and captivated for dozens of hours. Personally I believe that's a greater achievement than a well written story in a videogame, after all videogames are for playing but that doesn't mean we should not have both good story telling and gameplay. But just as an example, Super Robot Wars is one of my favorite SRPG series ever and yet I don't understand a lick of Japanese, so clearly story is a non issue in regards to my enjoyment of the games.

As for FF13-2 ,Lightning and Caius had rather well written dialogue in FF13-2. Downside was Serah and Noel are in there for the kids to stay interested and sort of spoon feed you everything. Everything else about the game is great. I literally need a guide to 100% this game, struggling collecting all 160 fragments, FF13 however I came close 100%ing without even consulting any guide what so ever. Poor story? When you have 99% of reviewers whining they don't understand the lore in FF13 it's clearly a case of poor story telling and not so much a poor story. The worlds of Cocoon and and Gran Pulse are enriched in captivating lore, problem is the dialogue is what fails to immerse and leads us to refuse to allow ourselves to care. I find most JRPGs in general suffer this same problem. When I said Chrono Trigger makes me cringe, it's the dialogue and not so much the world which has immersed me through other means.

tl;dr no