I'm still lost on how we know Lightning is a Cloud clone outside of appearance...

I'm just going to primarily address the bottom, here: you mean RPG games in this last paragraph, right?

Yes, just RPG's. There are many other non-RPG's where remembering a particular level, boss, challenege, endless time spent on mulitplayer, whatever has forever immortalized it for me. This is less of me praising RPG's stories as it is criticizing their gameplay; I'd quit playing RPG's altogether if they stopped having good stories and characters. Endless level grind bores me to tears when there are so many other much more engaging genres out there.

Now you're just making stuff up. What roles? This isn't an MMO... we don't come equipped with tanks and healers. There are some "set strategies" like speed boost + baton pass or Salac + Sub + Belly Drum, but there are dozens of these alone, and some of the better players don't use any of these. Some teams are just made up of their own unique mixes of offense and defense, or creative uses of individual moves. There is no template for a Pokemon team. Please stop this discussion, as it's only going to get worse for you.

That's fair, but I don't hold it as being necessarily the case: some RPGs really do differentiate themselves enough. Mother 3, through the use of rolling health and a rhythm-based combo system, made a standard Dragon Quest-style battle system into something that was fun and engaging by itself.

I guess what I'm saying is that I believe in holding RPG gameplay to as high a standard as anything else. Games should be fun to play, period.

Before I continue: you are positing, then, that the primary function of certain Pokemon, such as Blissey and Empoleon, is not that of the Special Wall, which are used almost exclusively to absorb hits from special attackers?

@Khuutra

I agree, which is I guess what I failed to express in my rush to expound on other points. I consider the World Ends With You, for example, to be one of the greatest games in recent history because, among other reasons, it had both a great story AND awesome gameplay. Mother 3, also, was a blast to play largely because of its battle system. And ideally I wish the genre at large would realize this and start offering us fresh, innovative experiences that are actually fun. Might go a long way to shaking up my recent RPG laissez-faire

I suppose it would be a strength of the genre, then, that for every all-around awesome RPG I've played, there are just as many that are, at their core, simplistic and boring, yet have managed to string me along to the end thanks to the characters and story.

I'm lamenting this fact, not celebrating it, as it allows rampant laziness on the part of JRPG developers: aware of the fact of how integral a role the story and characters play, they (usually ineptly) focus on those aspects, and throw together some generic (but wordily and novelly named) battle system. Since story plays such a strong role in RPG's, these games will often, regardless, be played through and very well-liked. Thus my original point: great gameplay is not essential to a great RPG--though, when it's there, it only serves to make it even better. A story-less RPG, on the other hand, would be more frustratingly boring than playing tic-tac-toe for 30 straight hours.

That's correct. There is no purpose in a special tank, unless they have another purpose unique to them. Let's use Blissey, since you decided to pick her. Blissey can be: the status giver, the healer, the sweeper, the stealth rock supporter, or more. Her special defense is just an attribute, not her strategy.

At heart I agree with you - people do need to be more adventurous in how they design these systems. The combo system gives me a lot of hope for FFXIII as a gameplay experience, and when I heard that they had done away with leveling I was one of the few people that was actually excited by the prospect. I believe in innovation!

But I also agree that the heart of the experience of Mother 3 was in tears shed, just as much as the 16-hit combos.

You, my good sir, are in a losing argument.

Good gameplay doesn't just make an RPG good. It makes any game good. Earlier, you said that people don't play RPGs for good gameplay, and that they don't have good gameplay in the first place. If you're going to contradict yourself this much, you must think I'm an idiot. Of course a good story and good characters add to the experience. That's true for any genre. A shooter with good gameplay and a good story is far better than a shooter with good gameplay and a bad story. You're really stating the obvious here. Stat building and leveling and equipment are what make the games fun, and they're the core of the gameplay. Gameplay is the core of the game. If you take Metal Gear Solid 4 and take out all the gameplay, you just have a movie (and this is pretty much true for any game with cutscenes). What you're saying really makes no sense. So the things you listed are what make it not an interactive novel or story, but at they're best, they're interactive novels/stories? Are you actually reading what you're writing before you hit the "post" button? This is painful to read. The gameplay is what anyone buys a game for. They don't progress you into the narrative and progression, they progress you through the gameplay and add pacing. You're clearly out of touch, and if putting gameplay over other aspects in an RPG means that I'm not a hardcore RPG fan, than I don't want to be one. RPG lovers must be out of touch with gaming if that's the case.

Final Fantasy 7 is acclaimed because it's a great game. Maybe you don't think it's fun, but that's your opinion. Most people seem to think it's a great game, and it got great reviews. I consider it a fun game, and I'm still playing it more than 10 years later (from time to time). Hell, Final Fantasy 7 still has a more enjoyable and complex battle system than some RPGs today (see: Lost Odyssey). And wait, what does Chrono Trigger being "technically deficient" have to do with anything? People love it now and they loved it back when it released because it was a brilliant game. Great gameplay, great story, great music; the whole package.

Ace Attorney is a poor example. Even if it's not heavy on gameplay, it likely has some. I'm not sure, since I'm not very familiar with the series. Either way, the majority of games aren't like Ace Attorney, and the sales prove that that type of game isn't very popular. "Game" is not a vague term. Putting it simply, it's something that you play and have fun with. If you don't have fun with it, it's a bad game. Putting gameplay and fun first is the reason why videogames are thriving. Videogames are growing at a rate pretty much unseen by any other medium, and rapidly expanding its demographics. It's more popular than it has ever been. And you're saying we should replicate other mediums by making games "art?" They're not mindless by putting gameplay first at all. There's nothing stopping a game from having great gameplay and a great story; in fact, it's been done many times before. But putting any other aspect of games before gameplay will be the death of this industry. Wanna see how that policy works? Ask Nintendo, who decided to put gameplay before graphics and is now dominating the market and bringing in millions of new gamers. I'd rather have a medium that's fun and improving all the time than one that's similar to the crap movies have become.