This may be just a meme comment, but the people who believe graphics > gameplay are genuinely ruining western video games. The way a lot of companies are attempting to keep under budget for games is to make them shorter and shorter and shorter. This is most evident with arcade fps games, nowadays most non-rpg shooters are about 3 to 8 hours long campaign wise. I remember growing up and these sorts of games were a good 30 hours.

While this is USUALLY true, there are a handful of exceptions. Visual novels, for example, live and die on their writing, characters and presentation, whereas gameplay isn't nearly as crucial.

But yes, you are absolutely right that graphical fidelity is little more than a tool in the box.