Story based would be where the gameplay is secondary to the story and/or characters. Consider FF5-10 or so where the gameplay really didn't have too many meaningful changes to it besides adding the timer. Otherwise it's a simple gameplay of level up, have mild modification abilities for members of your party as they level, engage in turn based selection. What reason do you have to pick up 7 and 8 if you played 6? Absolutely nobody is going to say "Because of ATB and Materia/Junctions!"
Likewise, the Suikoden games have had the same exact 6 member, two row battle system since the original PS1 game. All 5 of them are political stories driven by some mystic rune based world building. We've got 5 games of this already and yet one of the most successful kickstarters this year was the Suikoden original development team saying "We're launching a new independent franchise with the same battle system and classic 2d look of the earliest two Suikodens. It's not Suikoden due to copywrite, but, yeah, it's Suikoden."
As someone who likes "story based" games almost exclusively, I'm the target audience, I am much more tolerant of the game element being a window dressing for the story. But I get turned off immediately if I feel a story, in a game or otherwise, is being preachy at me, even if I agree with it. I agree with an awful lot of what Ayn Rand says, but her fiction is just awful to me for this reason: the story and characters are a dressing for her philosophy. Lady, I would happily just read your philosophy without the dressing. You insist upon pouring this ketchup all over my steak!
I think this naturally raises the question: "why bother making a game at all instead of a movie or a series, if you want to tell a story?" There are unique things a game can do to help pull you into it. Instead of having to bore you with the description of a town or a building, you can do some menial task or sidequest in it. You also might really get a better feel for a character's strengths or weaknesses is you plan out and play a battle strategy around them. Likewise, you can get a feel between "this enemy was tough" vs. "I beat this enemy on my fifth try after a ton of grinding and I'm still pretty sure it was luck." Even if you don't identify with the main characters (which you're more likely to do in silent hero games, but less likely to do in games like Final Fantasy where the lead has his own beliefs and biases and style and issues) you playing even a menially active part can connect you to it in a way a purely passive medium can't.
This is also why I think Last of Us 2 is considered a flop by anyone who enjoyed Last of Us 1 as a "Story Based" game instead of as a story with dressing for their philosophy. LOU2 is clearly drawing a comparison between Ellie and Abby for the theme of letting go of vengeance. But may players who invested so much time into Joel and Ellie's relationship have an investment that a more passive medium might not have endowed them with: this made the transition to Abby's viewpoint ineffective, and even when fully aware of the game's intended message and that it was trying to be subversive, they were forced to play as someone they never wanted to succeed. This is made worse by many seeing it as a story twist forced for philosophical reasons rather than really wanting to tell the story it did---specifically because the story failed to do what it was trying to do, which was make you sympathetic to Abby by the end.
I think the reason a lot of reviewers or non-gamers were much more into LOU2 is because a lot of them didn't play the first game, they watched LPs. They took it in more like a movie. Players who played both often experienced an inability to ever really connect with or root for Abby who's thrust on them in the second half of the second game. They resent having to take control of someone they hate and cannot root for. Mere viewers are just asked to watch her and, with less resentment and less demand of action on their part to support her, can be more open to her.
Story based would be where the gameplay is secondary to the story and/or characters. Consider FF5-10 or so where the gameplay really didn't have too many meaningful changes to it besides adding the timer. Otherwise it's a simple gameplay of level up, have mild modification abilities for members of your party as they level, engage in turn based selection. What reason do you have to pick up 7 and 8 if you played 6? Absolutely nobody is going to say "Because of ATB and Materia/Junctions!"
Likewise, the Suikoden games have had the same exact 6 member, two row battle system since the original PS1 game. All 5 of them are political stories driven by some mystic rune based world building. We've got 5 games of this already and yet one of the most successful kickstarters this year was the Suikoden original development team saying "We're launching a new independent franchise with the same battle system and classic 2d look of the earliest two Suikodens. It's not Suikoden due to copywrite, but, yeah, it's Suikoden."
As someone who likes "story based" games almost exclusively, I'm the target audience, I am much more tolerant of the game element being a window dressing for the story. But I get turned off immediately if I feel a story, in a game or otherwise, is being preachy at me, even if I agree with it. I agree with an awful lot of what Ayn Rand says, but her fiction is just awful to me for this reason: the story and characters are a dressing for her philosophy. Lady, I would happily just read your philosophy without the dressing. You insist upon pouring this ketchup all over my steak!
I think this naturally raises the question: "why bother making a game at all instead of a movie or a series, if you want to tell a story?" There are unique things a game can do to help pull you into it. Instead of having to bore you with the description of a town or a building, you can do some menial task or sidequest in it. You also might really get a better feel for a character's strengths or weaknesses is you plan out and play a battle strategy around them. Likewise, you can get a feel between "this enemy was tough" vs. "I beat this enemy on my fifth try after a ton of grinding and I'm still pretty sure it was luck." Even if you don't identify with the main characters (which you're more likely to do in silent hero games, but less likely to do in games like Final Fantasy where the lead has his own beliefs and biases and style and issues) you playing even a menially active part can connect you to it in a way a purely passive medium can't.
This is also why I think Last of Us 2 is considered a flop by anyone who enjoyed Last of Us 1 as a "Story Based" game instead of as a story with dressing for their philosophy. LOU2 is clearly drawing a comparison between Ellie and Abby for the theme of letting go of vengeance. But may players who invested so much time into Joel and Ellie's relationship have an investment that a more passive medium might not have endowed them with: this made the transition to Abby's viewpoint ineffective, and even when fully aware of the game's intended message and that it was trying to be subversive, they were forced to play as someone they never wanted to succeed. This is made worse by many seeing it as a story twist forced for philosophical reasons rather than really wanting to tell the story it did---specifically because the story failed to do what it was trying to do, which was make you sympathetic to Abby by the end.
I think the reason a lot of reviewers or non-gamers were much more into LOU2 is because a lot of them didn't play the first game, they watched LPs. They took it in more like a movie. Players who played both often experienced an inability to ever really connect with or root for Abby who's thrust on them in the second half of the second game. They resent having to take control of someone they hate and cannot root for. Mere viewers are just asked to watch her and, with less resentment and less demand of action on their part to support her, can be more open to her.