I'm saying that many RPGs are enjoyable based purely on the exploration of the world and the storyline and characters. Kind of like a point and click adventure can be fun even if you don't really care about pointing and clicking.
A good RPG should have a good battle system to supplement it, but its not a deal breaker if it doesn't get in the way.
For example, I played through and enjoyed almost all of FFX by basically just mashing X through each battle. It got to the point where when traveling through some areas I would watch TV and have the game in picture-in-picture and just mash X if I saw a random battle come up.
However, if the game forces you to grind and you don't love the battle system, that can halt it dead. I want to finish FFXII, but I got stuck on a boss and had to grind to beat him, and I just would rather play something else than spend my time doing that. If I would have been able to beat the boss without having to double back, I would have kept playing the game.
I can completely see where Solid Blake is coming from.