First off, just to get things straight, I love Chrono Trigger and it's my third favorite game of all time with Final Fantasy VI, another game with awful gameplay, is my favorite game of all time.

That said, it's hard to put my finger on why I would call the gameplay bad but if I had to it would be the tedium and the necessary parts of the game that destroy any flow and pacing the game has.

For the tedium, walking through certain areas again and again and again fighting the same enemies that aren't even worth your while just gets annoying.  It is cool to constantly revisit places but it just gets really old.  In fact, combat in general gets old.  It's cool learning new techs and different character combinations, but that game wears quickly.  Especially when you're doing the necessary grinding for levels, tech points, and items.  When the game is on, it's a wild ride, but the rest of the time it's a bore fest.

Which brings me to the pacing.  As I said, when the game is on, it's great.  The story is fantastic, the characters are incredible, and the music is awesome but when you're stuck farming certain items for the trading post, trying to tech up for a big fight, farming money, or just grinding in general, the game is boring.  Even places like Magus' fortress where you have to kill 100 of his henchmen (I have no idea if it's 100, I've never counted) just makes you sigh.  The combat can be cool, but it isn't the fun part of that game.

I equate grinding to fetch quests in modern games.  People don't like that shit and it only serves to artificially lengthen the game.  While modern games have mostly learned their lesson that people generally don't like long fetch quests, the traditional JRPG's have not learned their lesson.

Also,

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK I hate that shit where if you click off the reply window it instantly wipes your reply!  I've had to rewrite this 3 damn times because any post longer than a line I have to write in pieces as I work!  This is bullshit.

Persona is the only game I can think of that innovates well while being quite clearly a JRPG to whomever you ask.

1. Re-open reply window, CTRL plus Z.

2. Chrono Trigger and FFVI rarely, if ever, had you exploring the same area multiple times. COming back to the Narshe Mines worked very well as a setting device.

3. If you're grinding in either of those games, you're playing wrong/poorly.

4. Combat can be very fun; you not appreciating what it tries to offer you does not qualify it as bad.

5. When I ask you to qualify a bad thing, I expect more than "I didn't like it"

1- Press reply, type anything, click somewhere outside the reply window.  At least in Firefox 3.6 you lose everything even if you press Ctrl z or click reply again.

2- You constantly had to go through other areas in Chrono Trigger (Guardia Forest, The Future, pretty much anywhere a gate was before you got the Epoch) and even when you didn't, combat was still pretty tedious.  There were a lot of exciting parts but there were far more parts when getting through an area just felt like a chore.

3- About grinding, what can I say, I like the awesome abilities.

4- You asked me to qualify and I tried.  I don't really care if you don't accept it.  Combat is tedious and pretty often boring.  You have the occasional hard area and boss, the rest of the time fighting the enemies isn't fun.

I'm just telling you for future reference; "I didn't like it" isn't enough to qualify something as "bad"

And I explained further than just "I didn't like" in the post you quoted (or at least thought I did, I rewrote so many times I imagine it was pretty scattered).  If anything, hopefully I at least explained in the next post...

Tedium isn't fun.

How could you even compare the storyline of games like Killzone and Gears to the storyline of games like Final Fantasy XIII and Lost Odyssey?

*explodes*