Grandia II, or Why do I even like RPGs?

I just finished Grandia II, and I'm not still not entirely sure why I bothered. The gameplay is probably more compelling than the gameplay in, say, Final Fantasy VII, and the storyline's of about equal quality. I think I liked the FFVII characters better; most of the Grandia II characters just annoyed me. In any case, I feel like the only reason I finished the game was because I was bored.

The whole experience made me wonder why I like RPGs so much. Gameplay-wise, their only distinguishing feature seems to be character advancement via levels or some other numerical system. A lot of newer RPGs are essentially action-adventure games, but with levels and equipment. And most of the tactical and strategic components are present in, well, strategy games, and they're better-developed in those games, too. Admittedly, I think RPGs tend to have the most interesting small-scale, mixed real-time and turn-based, battle systems. Strategy games generally aren't interested in such a small scale, so RPGs have the monopoly there.

So what do I like about RPGs? I think for me, it's the process of advancing and developing a character. Grandia II did have a neat little system with skill books and mana eggs, where you earned points as a group by winning battles, and then spent them either on individual characters, or on shared resources that could be assigned to characters. The battle system was also fairly interesting, although most of the random battles were quite boring. The boss battles were much more interesting, since there were more strategic elements. The dungeons I felt had a great deal of pointless walking around. I also managed to get lost a lot, because there was no map; your only guide is a compass that can be tuned to one of a couple of locations (e.g. the dungeon entrance or next level, the inn in town) and will point you in a direction and say how far you are. This is pretty useless in dungeons which twist and turn a lot. I remember one where the exit was just a little bit to the east of the starting point, but of course you had to go the long way around.

So I guess I was mostly playing it for the boss battles. Which is kind of sad.