I've dealt with both situations, but they definitely both have their limits. I think I could probably deal with a bad story more than I can bad gameplay

Legend of Legaia's gameplay was so much fun, but the story was very so/so. And I played it and enjoyed the hell out of it. And then there's Star Ocean: Last Hope, where the gameplay was really fun, and the story was blah, and then you get the Tidus transformation, and after about 10 hours of that bulltrout, I quit. FFX falls completely into that category as well. I've gotten towards the end of the game twice, because its fun to play, but ugh is it terrible to experience

The first Uncharted game made me rage so much with its glitchy and inexperienced gameplay mechanics. You could definitely tell the developers were not used to making that sort of game. But it was totally worth slogging through because it wasn't quite THAT bad, and the story and characters and settings were really interesting. Same with Dark Souls. There's more cheap and unexpected deaths rather than earned deaths through sheer challenge, like "Haha, I got you", because there's NO lighting and you're expected to go at a snail's pace in one area. Or the camera hits a wall and spins around so you can't see the combat, or gives you a great full-screen view of your entire back, while you're getting wailed on by the front. And yet I slog through that, because of the atmosphere and exploration and wonder are totally worth it

But in all cases where I slogged through one aspect to enjoy another, that other wasn't completely unredeemable. Tidus was unredeemable. Hell, I couldn't stomach Kingdom Hearts because of its gameplay mechanics. Running around thwacking stuff constantly just didn't appeal to me, but I imagine the story was interesting