As long as you hold onto the assumption that all physical phenomena on the macro scale can in a (perhaps not useful) sense be explained reductively by particle/field physics of some sort, it's clear that poking at the particle/field/whatever substrate is more foundational than studying high level emergent phenomena. That isn't to say that high-energy particle physics is the best or only avenue of fundamental exploration; obviously, much of the last century's advancements came from cosmology.

There's nothing wrong with studying condensed matter physics, and there is a huge amount to learn. But I don't see a conceivable way in which discoveries made by studying complex behavior closer to our scale will help solve quantum gravity or dark matter.

Then again, if humanity were one big game of Civilization, I'd be directing my tech tree towards engineering and applied physics research at the moment: we probably don't need any more fundamental physics to build sustainable fusion reactors.