Sincere question as someone lukewarm on the game

I understand this might come across as dismissive or contrarian and I just wanna assure everyone I'm really trying to come form a place of good faith here, but like ... What did you get out of this game that's unique to it? Obviously art is derivative by nature and I don't think it's a bad thing that e33 borrowed a lot from a bunch of sources but I really struggle with the fact that so much of its world design, gameplay, and narrative all seem to be stuff I've seen before in games, and movies that I enjoyed more than this one to the degree that it just made me want to play SMT and Paper Mario and made me want to watch The Wizard of Oz and inception and Mulholland drive instead of playing it. The game is very well made on so many fronts in it's visuals and music and it's a strongly crafted narrative with great performance but it really just did not click with me in the way I was hoping as a fan of RPGs so as sincerely as I can muster: what am I missing here?