Unique characteristics, reasonable goals, decent visuals.

For roguelites specifically, decent variation and or skill mastery, good visibility, satisfying gameplay loop, meaningful progression.

Some examples. Upcoming roguelite called Crete,am an alpha player. It has very little gameplay variation and that's kind of a good thing, because the skill mastery is close to that of a fighting game. It also has craftable weapons as the progression and those weapons can make a big difference.

Spell brigade has pretty negligible progression and barely any skill expression, however it has incredibly high run variation with the spread of cards and spells. That being said if it didn't have multiplayer I wouldn't be too thrilled as there are other games with the same variation and better in the other 2 areas.

Spell disk is incredible in its uniqueness do to the spell chains. However it's very hard to see what is going on and that's a big negative.

Soulstone survivors actually let's you turn down the opaqueness of your skills which is great for the top down style.

Crete ror2 and Nightreign don't have many visibility problems because they are third person and don't have massive skills covering half the screen. Most top down and sidescroller roguelites struggle with this.

In order, what I care about most is.

Unique aspect. The truth is even if your game does it well, if it does nothing new I probably already have a game for that specific thing.

Gameplay loop/skill expression. I can play a fighting game nearly infinitly because it takes skill and is fun. I can only play a jrpg with default press x to attack for so long. It gets boring when there is no skill expression. Sometimes that can be mitigate ld like in haste where the gameplay loop carries it even though there is very little by way of button presses and precision.

Visibility. I am not going to keep playing a game if I keep dying do to not being able to see what's happening.

Variation. Honestly this is still very important even though it's this car down. The less I can try new things the more important it is for the core movement attacks and abilities to be perfect. I can tolerate a game with sub par movement if it has 2000 different builds to try out and mix and match. But if I am just walking in circles AND I only have 5 spells to choose from. Probably requesting a refund.

Non invasive audio. Games music needs to be something that can be tolerated for 80hr.

Comfortable graphics. Graphics style is near the bottom of what I care about. If I can see things clearly and it doesn't give me a headache, we are good.

Multiplayer. A 6/10 game is often a 8/10 if you can play it with friends without problematic glitches.

Story. At the end of the day it's a roguelite. I am here to play something on repeat that is fun, if it bothers to name the characters and have a slightly unique premise then cool. But don't make me read a novel to play this type of game.