Well, basically all of the genres and series I play are known for being story heavy, so that's clearly important to me, particularly with characterisation and dialogue. I place a lot of value in a strong, memorable soundtrack, even more so if it's listenable outside of the context of the game, and a distinct visual style is a pretty nice hook. These three core appeals are present in almost all of my favourite games.

I don't need the most graphically impressive title but I do definitely struggle with anything pre-PS2, because my first console was the Wii. I hate buggy games, and games with poor UI or onboarding/tutorialisation. It's pretty rare that I can get super invested in games without caring much for their writing, and most of the exceptions are games with fairly unique gameplay systems such as Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, and NEO: The World Ends with You. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is fast entering that tier as well because wow the writing is... there's issues, let's put it that way.

I hate randomness, and I tend to dislike games that force you to play them multiple times to see everything. Fire Emblem is the bane of my existence because of all of the randomness involved, the limited exp on top of random stat growths, and worst of all, Three Houses making you play the game 4 times where the first half is nearly identical on all of them. No thanks! It doesn't help that I think 3H also has really poor onboarding where it overwhelms you with tons of options without sufficiently explaining why you should care about any of them, and why any of them are valuable for different reasons or situations. Plus every other series-wide critique I have for FE.

idk this was kinda rambly but eh, hope that was interesting!