I'll like or unlike ARPG its up to...

1. Camera : If they can't make a good camera view it'll ruin gameplay and intention to play it.
2. Storyline : Not too light and not too much complicate ,if the story just tell you "go out and kill that evil untill no more of'em" or " You're my son and my father was a king ,and he got a jewel in his mace ,and that mace hide under his tomb.Which his tomb bla bla bla".This'll decrease my willing to play for 10-20%(and maybe more if it really bad).
3. Variety : You need more than only 1 class and only 1 weapon to kill bosses ,i love to see new weapons and use it.Equip with best of the best armors which crafted with latest monster that i just kill.
4. AI : Ah ,please neither make enemy nor friendly units became some thing like a stand-still polygons or runing around try not to find some cover when they shoot to'em.
5. Bugs : in some ARPG ,only few bugs can destroy a game(for example ,you can not safe game or you can not pass this way if you didn't get that item ,and you can not go back to get it now.)
6. Environment : i need more than only fight in the same tunnel in every levels.Desert ,forest ,swamp etc. bring it on! i want them all.

Ps. Oh , i just noticed that someone already give a list like me when finish typing :p

My biggest pet peeve is camera which is sad because so many high profile ARPGs have a god awful cameras includes Tales games and Star Ocean games.

Give me the ability to see myself and the enemies at all times.  None of this wandering off screen crap in the Tales series or the random zoom ins for the Star Ocean games.

In the majority of RPG's I dislike repetitive gameplay, derivative combat systems, clichéd stories, unlikable characters and monotonous grinding. In JRPG's I dislike the almost complete lack of real role playing elements which make them linear grindfests cluttered with cutscenes. Basically I enjoy real RPG's like Deus Ex and Fallout and dislike "lite RPG's" like Final Fantasy.

What do you mean by the camera in Tales and Star Ocean games?  I know I played the Star Ocean on the PS2 but I can't remember the camera for the life of me.  Was it a fixed camera and that's what you don't like?

Would you like a camera along the lines of Mass Effect or would you like a camera on a rail?

Do you guys hate JRPGs just because they mostly don't have actual roleplaying?  Would you guys like them more if they were called adventure games?

The only unlikeable character I know about in a JRPG is Squall from FFVIII.  What exactly makes a character likable or unlikable?

A camera takes a lot of work to implement and that is why they aren't very good a lot of the times.  I have played Star Ocean 3 and I never really had a problem with the camera.

Can Tales and Star Ocean really be called ARPGs since they still work with a turn based RPG template?

I never really like fixed cameras.

There is a big difference in what you want in a title like Kingdom Hearts to something like Mass Effect

what I like about Mass Effect is the amount of detail in the game. I do also love the setting of that, and the fact that you could just play it as a 3rd person shooter. I would prefer it if it did not have so many loading scenes... Anyway, I do like the fact that you get the Mako (though they could improve the controls)

@ twesterm, in Star Ocean you can control it in the world map, but not for battle. Also, you have to control it with R1/L1

In Kingdom Hearts II, the main issue was that magic was not really required, and you should basically have to use it. You can get by it in Mass Effect by just having your squad doing that for you, and I do like the fact that in Kingdom Hearts you do not have to directly control your squad and they basically do the right thing for most of the time

For example, the Tales of Symphonia camera keeps you on one side of the screen with the opponent you are targetting on the other.  As you get farther away or closer together it zooms in and out (with certain limits).  This didn't always work well if you wanted to keep tabs on what all enemies were doing or if you were doing two-player as the camera didn't follow the second player at all.

The Star Ocean III camera did something similar except you didn't always have a target so it would zoom in on your character completely taking away your entire view of the battle.  The only time it would zoom out would be when you cast a spell where it would zoom all the way out to let you see the effects.  Then it would zoom in again.

I wouldn't mind a fixed camera as long as it kept the entire battlefield in view (assuming there is a small battlefield).  Otherwise give me an adjustable camera with several degrees of distance from the character and the ability to move it around.  Of course if you give me the ability to adjust the camera, let me decide which direction each axis goes.  Most games these days use the inverted flight sim style of camera movement and I prefer the normal mode.  Games which let me change it to my preferred style are my friends.  ^_^

I don't know about Star Ocean, but Tales is nothing like turn-based... the fighting is pretty much a sidescrolling Kingdom Hearts.

1) I don't mind missing so much... as missing when I hit.  It's like when your playing gears of war.  You get right up next to some guy and unload your shotgun point blank.... and you still miss.  It's frustrating.  Should that miss be show by like... a jerk to the right or something.  Sure that makes sense.

2) Maybe... if you work up the abiltiy differences though... like fire monster weak against ice etc... I think it would really go a long way to making it less monotonous.  Simialrly if spells became better vs different enemies because of their style instead of their powers... like ice best against fast enemies, lightning attacks only good vs slower enemies but do the most damage etc.