The stuff the Japanese excel at are just in general more preferable to me than the stuff westerners excel at - combat (especially action), art direction/settings, polish and game balance (and

). Open world, go anywhere sandboxy design is cool at first but after a while, I lose interest since I don't have much direction. Like, I LOOOOOVED Xenoblade, which had huge worlds to explore, but it also had direction and a feeling of progression (which is why reports of Xenoblade X worry me a bit).
Of course there are exceptions on both sides. Witcher 1 and 2 (haven't played 3 yet) had a nice balance between sidequesting and story, along with serviceable (though broken) combat and fairly unique for the genre tropes. Planescape had a pretty interesting storyline, and a lot of the grindy RPG stuff could be avoided (which is good since it's definitely not the game's strong suit).