Games seem to try to do different things. Some like to use good graphics, others good game-play. For me, I think I'm the kind of person who will look at what an RPG is good at, and pay attention to that.

So, really, I like RPGs that do something, like graphics, game-play, whatever and do it well, while everything else is at least passable.

One thing that does annoy me, is things being lost forever, and exploits in game mechanics that make the game trivial and are counter intuitive (Hello FFII).