Quote Originally Posted by blissfulnoise View Post
The modern GTA series are anomalies as they spawned off a whole new type of game: the Sandbox game. While there are many RPG elements involved, each game ultimately divulges into a third person action game.
Sandbox games are nothing new, with pen and paper RPGs being very much sandbox games. Plenty of PC RPGs, including Ultima 7, have been highly sandbox in nature. The Grand Theft Auto games might have originated as sandbox style third person action games, but they've been evolving back into RPGs, especially with the leaps that San Andreas made. While the previous games in the series might have been sandboxy action/adventure games, San Andreas "bridged the gap".

Deus Ex (and Thief and BioShock) is a shooter first, adventure game second.
Thief is different from Deus Ex and System Shock 2 in that it lacks the experience point and growth concept. I agree that it's a sealth-based action game above all else (and pretty much one of the highlights of the entire stealth action genre). Bioshock takes the System Shock 2 design and watered it down, but the core RPG elements are still there, all mish mashed with the action elements.

By your criteria, Diablo, Nox, Divine Divinity, and Sacred are all point and click action games first, adventure games second, and not RPGs at all.

The definition of "adventure games" has been broadened beyond Zork to encompass playstyles that fall between that of a standard action game and an RPG.
Well that's somewhat of a different topic, though. Sure, there's text adventures (Zork!), point and click adventures (Sam & Max!), parser-based adventures (King's Quest), and then the broadened action/adventure category (Little Big Adventure! Legend of Zelda!), but I think that it'd be incorrect to throw in games that clearly meet the criteria for inclusion under the RPG umbrella into the adventure bucket just because they have more action.

Now a games like Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Culdcept Saga fall elsewhere due to play mechanics. CoM is an Action/Card game, and is pretty damn unique in the world of video games. Culdcept Saga is nothing more than a board game.
Won't get any argument out of me on either of these. But by the same token, I wouldn't exclude Phantasy Star Online III or Baten Kaitos from a list of "Card games" just because they happen to also be RPGs.