^I thought so too! :)

You missed the point of the thread. Between the two, which is worse?

I have a hard time believing that.

Since both lead to a bad game, there are degrees of bad. I'm surprised to think both are as bad for you while either story+ or gameplay are excellent.

Well it is a videoGAME, stories tend to just get in the way of the actual fun.

There's a reason why JRPGs and visual novels are big genres.

Story.

Story is extremely important to me. Presentation of the story is also extremely important to me. While I may love a game for its gameplay, my favorite games are all ones which engage me in their presentation and story.

That's not to say that the stories have to be "super complex" or "realistic". I love the story and presentation in Sonic & Knuckles. I downright ADORE the story and presentation in Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie. Same goes for Super Mario 64. And Luigi's Mansion. And many others I could name.

I am truly shocked that anyone has voted for excellent story with bad gameplay.

With a few notable exceptions I find stories in games to be a total yawn-fest, and deeply object when they are un-skippable. All I want is some brief, loosely woven explanation I can hammer start through to get to the actual GAMEPLAY because it's a game and the interactive part is, for me, by far the most important thing.

I buy a game to play a game. If I wanted to watch some moody, drawn out story with cg characters or read a bad novel I would do so.

Needs a good balance, but I value game play over story in video games, we are not watching a TV show or a Movie after all.

It's more about game depth when it comes to JRPGs on game play other than the obvious importance on story (both are why most gen 7 JRPGs are disappointing, I pray to whatever higher power is there to make gen 8 the mostly good shit JRPG gen again), it's where the new Fire Emblem stands above the rest in current gen SRPGs so far.

Visual Novels are not games, they are interactive story books.

It's possible that you also didn't think the stories of gen 7 games weren't all that great either. I know personally I haven't tried too many because I wasn't expecting much, given the way most entertainment has been managed in the recent years.

But just this week I went and purchased a 2nd hand copy of FFX, and the story just doesn't dissappoint. The game could have been a turd (which it isn't!), I would've still love it. ;)

They are mostly just bad in the overall but I still got a kick out of them for the most part, I liked the Tales and Star Ocean combat for the most part. Eternal Sonata was refreshing since I wasn't saving the fucking universe this time around. Xenoblade was an excellent game despite of the funny graphics. The Last Story had a really interesting combat system that I want to see more of from Mistwalker etc..... and I actually have 2 copies of FF13 even though I hated a lot about the game (one NA and one International since I wanted JP Audio and Vanile sounded a lot better in JP so that made it better if nothing else lol.)