Digimon World 3 had such a wild story as well! I feel like Cyber Sleuth was a semi-spiritual successor given it takes place in a sort of VR cyberspace. But I loved the DW3 concept of a VR MMO. Would adore a remake as it’s extremely long and clunky for today (almost unplayable without 3x speed on ePSXe).
Depends on the kind of game I think. Certain games I do play for the challenge (FromSoft, TBT, RTS, rogue-likes and lites). Others I’m playing for Story (RPGs).
I think a good example of a game that was too difficult (for me) but had an engaging story that I wanted to play was Celeste. I hate precision platformers. But they Devs knocked that out of the park in terms of accessiblity options so I could tweak it until it was enjoyable for me, and enjoy a beautiful story with beautiful music.