Good gameplay is based entirely on 2 basic aspects: interactions and reactions.
When you interact with the game environment, an animation plays, a sound is made, the environment is changed (an enemy is attacked, they get staggered, blood spurt out; a block if broken; a group of bubbles pops… etc), this is reaction. Good gameplay knows what the player expect, deliver it and brings a twist that, while out of player's expectation, is still in the comfort zone of the player. The interaction is player's control, the reaction is the animation and sound.
For example, look at DMC series, specifically DMC2, DMC3, DMC4 and DmC (I didn't include the first one because clearly it's entirely different from the later games, but not in a negative way). First, DMC3/4. Look at the Rebellion. The control is tight and responsive, there's no delay at all between the button press and the animation play, as well as the effect it has on the environment. There's no delay between interaction and reaction. This is what all players expect from the control: immediate reaction. This is where the satisfaction comes from. This is further augmented by the animation and sound, and the twist from expectation. Take Million Stab for example, a combo where you mash the button to stab longer and thus deal more damage. The animation is fast, the sound is pretty much metal clashing into each other, making a devastating impression, and at the end of the move is a pause, and then single stab with an explosive sound entirely different from the stabbing sound before. This gives the reaction a weight to it, and adds to the satisfaction. You can find this correct for everything, from the charge of Beowulf to the Helm-Breaker of Red Queen, to the explosion of a Scarecrow, the charge of a Blitz, etc
However, DMC2 and DmC did not have this. DMC2 had a fluid interaction but its reaction is horrible. The animations are linear, no ups, no downs, the Million Stab is slow, it sounds like swinging a bamboo stick in the air. The guns, despite being the unfortunate main weapons, deal terrible damage. This is against what the players expectation: That their attacks when performed properly will be devastating and take a good chunk of HP off. DmC had a nice reaction from the explosion, the disorientation of Donte when he swings the Rebellion too hard, the blood spurt… but its interaction is unacceptable. Not only the game more often than not runs at around 40FPS which is objectively bad for a character action game, but the delay between the input and the reaction is atrocious. If you read about DmC on Holla Forums when it was being developed, you'll probably recall the story of CAPCOM employees having to explain a certain term to Ninja Theory, a term that refers to the wind-up before an animation to give it weight. Ninja Theory was a big fucking retarded studio and abused this on every animation of every weapon barring half the Rebellion (which I assume was thanks to the CAPCOM employee watching and providing input). The result is every animation has a long windup time and thus it's really annoying to perform.
This applies to every other game: be it Mario jumping and breaking blocks, to Bubble Bobble's dinosaur shooting bubble, to Tetris' block fitting into the space and erases the completed rows, as long as the input is immediate and responsive, the animation is not lazily done and has just-enough length, the sound is fitting, and the reaction between the player and the environment as well the reaction between entities within the environment follows the same rule, then the good gameplay aspect is achieved.
This is also abused by freemium trash mobile dev to give players a false sense of quality: the input is immediate, animation is moderately done and colorful, the sound is cheerful, all to give players a sense of satisfaction. However none of the entities really interact with each other and the interaction between players and the game is locked behind an energy/stamina/whatever system; or there is a system in place that makes the interaction minimal. Some mobile games has actually pretty good gameplay because it's not limited by such retardation; for example, Timing Hero.