It depends on the mood. Sometimes I just feel like playing something and I don’t want history or cutscenes getting in the way, just gimme a good gameplay loop that is easy to get into and hard to master. Other times I’m looking for immersion, do not mistake with just some good history, it’s a mix of the right settings, art style, sound atmosphere and storytelling. Your example of Clair Obscur is the perfect example for this type of games and it also has incredible gameplay on top of it.

Does the base game have improved since it launched? I played for 8 hours at Game pass around 4-5 months after launch and had to stop playing because it was so broken. Game looked interesting but performance was ridiculously bad, NPC would span out of thin air, regular foes were bullet sponges, there were situation with infinite enemy respawn, etc.

Not an expert on RPG but I liked Bravely Default a lot in that regard because rather than multi class you kinda collected classes and switching them on the go made the gameplay so much more varied.