The most important part is the story, i like RPG's but haven't played a great deal of them, FF7 had everything i could think of, great story, characters you cared about, amazing music and a big open world for it's time, nothing has ever matched it for me.
Star ocean was a decent game but didn't quite do it for me, loved Xenoblade but never finished it because my Wii stopped reading discs, but yeah whats an RPG without a good story :)