Quote Originally Posted by roushimsx View Post
You're taking what I said out of context and limiting your view to assuming that I meant that the leveling up / experience points / stats are the sole point instead of one of the main points. World Tour Mode is a nice bonus feature with RPG elements, though Ehrgeiz and Tobal no 2 had dungeon crawler bonus features as well... would you call those RPGs? Hell to the no. The mode itself might be RPGish, but it's not like it's the main game. It's like calling Knights of the Old Republic a gambling game, Kingdom Hearts an on rails shooter, or Mario & Luigi's Superstar Saga a puzzle game based solely on the minigames included.



All Metroid and Zelda games (with the exception of the second!) are action adventure titles. It's not because of the viewpoint but because of the structure AND the inclusion of a leveling system. You know, like Ys III, Faxanadu or Symphony of the Night.

If you think that's silly, imagine how pen and paper players feel about computer RPGs (where there's not always a lot in the way of role playing) or how computer RPG fans feel about console RPGs (which are often extremely linear games with leveling mechanics...a far cry from any actual "role playing"). The only real constants (that I can think of, anyway) have been the leveling and the questing (or missions). As long as you have those two, then you've at least got some basis for calling a game an RPG. The definition of RPG isn't broad enough to cover all of the games in the collection but it's specific enough to cover games that aren't included

Hell, if there was a bit more consistency then it wouldn't be as much of a problem. Include From Software's first person rpgs but not Ion Storm Austin's? Include Future Tactics but not Ring of Red? No Grand Theft Auto San Andreas in the collection? Heroes of Might and Magic but no Daisenryaku VII Exceed? Why isn't Puzzle Quest included? With the inclusion of Everquest Online Adventures, you're pretty much stuck with requiring Final Fantasy XI, so you can't really call the collection complete without those, too.

I do agree that it helps to actually play games to determine if they're RPGs or not. It's quite possible that a reviewer or a friend will just label a game (like Ocarina of Time!) an RPG and you'll never know the better until you play it and realize that while it might be a great action adventure, but it's not quite an RPG. No amount of research on a title beats firing the fucker up and sitting down with it for a while.
Genre categories themselves are nothing more than measured based on how a game within the category relates to the others. I, personally, find calling Symphony of the Night an RPG absurd because it's plainly obvious that saying "If you liked Super Metroid you'll love Symphony" makes a hell of a lot more sense than saying "If you liked Chrono Trigger you'll love Symphony."

A really good example is Smash Bros. It's...kind of a fighting game...I suppose. But you'd have to be nuts to tell someone "If you like Street Fighter you'll like Smash." Hence something like Smash essentially bred a new genre or possibly subgenre within the parent umbrella of "fighting game."

I remember a philosophical question that relates to this. Imagine a heap of straw. Now remove one piece of straw. Is it still a heap? Now remove another piece. Is it still a heap? Eventually you'll get down to just one piece remaining. Is that one piece of straw a heap? Most people would say no. So that means one of two things. Either a single piece of straw really is a heap or there's one point where the cutoff happens. Something like ten pieces is a heap but take one more away and it's no longer a heap. But of course even that sounds crazy. It's the vagueness of "heap" that gets you there. Same with any genre.