Why is a game your favourite game? What makes is such a great game?

For me, it has to be the story and the world you enter. These two things are what really makes a game an experience for me. By the end of the game you are left thinking "wow", and you actually kind of miss the world you were absorbed in. Of course there are other things that makes a game good, but these are the most important things for me.

Anyway, how about you?

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I totally agree with you. If I don't care when I get a game over in a game, then there is something wrong with it. Characters need to be fleshed out and be thoroughly development as a game progresses. If not, I don't care what happens to them and I get that feeling I just wasted my valuable time learning about about people I don't care for.

Although, just because a game has a great story, doesn't make it a great game. If that was all I wanted, then I would watch a movie or read a book. A game also does need some level of decent game play. I have started games before where I fell in love with the characters but I couldn't finish it cause I couldn't stand the game play.

So what makes a great game for me? Amazing story with reasonable (or better) game play.

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Boobs and Romance. If you're playing games for any other reason, I don't care WHAT you say, you're doing it wrong.

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Substance over style if the game is story centered.

And if the game isn't story centered then it just has to be fun and addicting and be a game I would want to play every day...Like Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

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Yes, the characters are really important for me as well. I also agree with you about the game play. I do like visual novels, but for games such as The Legnd of Zelda and Mario, where the story doesn't matter as much, I feel that game play is the most important part. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be much point to playing the game.

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Depends on the genre.

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For me, it entirely depends on what genre the game I'm playing is to be deemed good. After all, I can't expect a Beat 'Em Up game to have a thrilling story, nor can I expect a puzzle game to have decent or any character development going on.
In general, though, I want my games to have decent graphics. It doesn't have to be breath-takingly beautiful, but I don't want to look at... FF VII's blocky polygon all the time, either. Not trying to attack FF VII, but that's the worst graphics I can imagine to look at while playing a game.

When it comes to RPGs, I want one that has a decently interesting story. And one that isn't predictable from beginning to end after passing the prologue of the game. Of course, story alone doesn't make me want to buy a game immediately - it still goes hand-in-hand with graphics, characters and similar, although I have been known to get and play a game that sounds decent at first, but the gameplay itself causes me to lose interest and realize that the story is not that great after all.
Blade Dancer - Lineage of Light.

Speaking of characters, if I have characters interacting in a game, I generally want them to get decent enough character development and not remain a bland, two-dimensional character whose entire personality can be summed up in one or two words. Again, depending on the game's genre, it varies on how much there is and how well it's done.
The Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side boys do get some hidden depths revealed and others remain sort of the typical character they are, although the later games do put more emphasis on making them more three-dimensional.
Tales Of games have hit-and-miss with giving character development, mostly to their main protagonist. Some don't give very much to them, some give them so much that you can really tell how they change over the game.

The gameplay relies on so many things that to me that one thing that annoys me to hell in one game can be just fine in a different game. Other times, something has been added into a game that feels so out of place. And then there are times where a game has so many small or big aspects in the gameplay that makes it seem terrible or even unplayable to me.
Again, Blade Dancer - Lineage on Light on the last part.

In general, the music of a game is not too overly important to me.
It has to fit, it has to sound nice and it needs to have some variety as I will be spending several hours playing that game. Overall, though, as long as it isn't too much in my face or too subtle, it's okay.
The heavy metal music for boss fights in FF XIII-2 seemed kind of off, for example.

For some examples, I enjoy Tales of the Abyss a ton because the main character just gets so much character development, it's a joy to see him change over the course of the game. The story is decently interesting, although the first time around I had no idea what was going on - mostly because there were tons of terms thrown in that had no proper meaning to me. Practically, anything with the word Fon in it. Then I realized that Fon is basically just a nice way to call something to make it sound more important in the game.

For a bad example, again... Blade Dancer - Lineage of Light. The story was nothing too special, but the characters and graphics looked nice enough. But a ton of the gameplay was so nitpicky, so overly doing things, forcing me to do something before I could actually do what I wanted - in terms of actions and not story - that I simply couldn't continue very far. Think of the people who complain that you constantly get a message when picking up a treasure in Skyward Sword and exaggerate it, but with a proper reason.

C-A

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Something that can make killing time entertaining. If you give me a game where it makes me feel like I'm in school and need to study countless pages about your story's history then no. You don't need to add most of these those down to prove that you've made a lot of research on it really, if I wanted to spend my time reading then I'd read a book. This is the first thing I will notice and can make me take the game out of the console before before I trade it or put it in my closet and never speak of it again.

A good example would be if character "a" asks character "b" about their sibling with a response of "sure I'll tell you about them they've lived in "x town" now let me tell you an equivalent of 20 pages of "x town" and the history of the country before I come back to the topic at hand."

Characters rambling to no end bothers me except for visual novels, that can be an exception, yet I've never encountered one that made me read a full detailed article about a minor topics unrelated to the plot.

Characterization is very important to me, it is something that will make me decide whether I would play this again or not. If your characters are shallow while relying solely on their good looking appearance and angst overload to appeal to the players, then count on me for not playing this again.

Of course the plot is important, if it doesn't stand out you won't reach a large audience in the market nor am I going to pick this out of the store shelf in the first place.