XD I take it for depression. I'm not exactly living a rock & roll lifestyle. :P

Well, it's never too late to start.

Cant speak for the latest. But the two I played (original 1st PC Sims & Sims3 on Nintendo DS) are better RPGs than i.e. Diablo.

Not being labeled such by its creator does not mean that a game can hit more RPG milestones than some games which are called RPGs. (i.e. Saints Row 2 & 3).

Well, I still have to see someone categorizing the first Diablo as an RPG ;)
Some might call that an "ARPG", but it is just a bit of slang to actually say "Hack’n’Slash" and has nothing to do with actual RPG…

mmm, I don't have any examples for an RPG but a good example of story-driven language-less game was "Brothers : Tale Of Two Sons".

But in itself, I quite like your concept, I might think on that for a future game project ;)

"Everybody" does (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_%28video_game%29)

I know what you mean and I agree. Its a slasher with some traditional RPG elements. But as soon as a game has a char with stats like Strength, Dex & Con in it it gets some form of RPG label regardless how one-dimensional the game is in playing the role of a character.

Yeah, you’re right… But I actually don’t care ;)
I don’t need Wikipedia to tell me what I’m actually playing, especially when it’s through such nonsense than "action role-playing hack and slash video game" (an "ARPH&SVG"?!).

Heretic! ;)

As said, totally agree. :)

Hmm, might be fun to read the adventures of two friends:
Arbitrarily redundant plunger hero and Smoochy vendor guy/girl (depending on what the author thinks works best).

I fully agree with you! What’s the point of calling "Role-Playing Game" a game without any opportunity for role-playing? ;P
Let’s burn the grumpy gamers who put "RPG" labels on everything!!

Uh… Wait…
I think I missed something here…

I can't speak for OP but one advantage of a language independent game is that it would be more direct and less complicated (but not necessarily lackding depth) to which we would perceive nature with our senses. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be that many games that utilize this and that one game that was recommended seemed to be primarily a roguelike (a hard one at that).

This might be Treasure of Tarmin, which doesn`t require you to read any ingame text afaik.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons:_Treasure_of_Tarmin]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons:_Treasure_of_Tarmin[/url]

However, it requires the player to know the meaning of the three-way score (something like your stats and described in the English manual) as well as the meaning of the keypad commands, so the player should be familiar with the basics of the game (I think it`s not that hard to figure out, even if you don`t know any English).
Fun fact described in the manual: If you want to know how many food units you have, press a button and you`ll hear a number of clicks. You`ll need to count the number of the clicks to determinate how much food you have. The same mechanic is used, to count your arrows.

I would assume that this is due to two reasons:

First, the genre of RPGs is generally associated with story-telling. There aren't that many turn-based RPGs that completely focus on mechanics to begin with, and if they do, like Aarklash Legacy, for example, they are criticized for the lack of story. Sure, some RPGs, especially the older ones from the 80's, offer more combat than interesting story, but they have story elements regardless. Naturally, it's a lot more difficult to tell stories without words (it's possible and I know a couple of adventure games that do it, but those aren't the epic stories you expect in CRPGs, and in those games the designers fully concentrate on the story aspects). So I'm not surprised that the recommendation from above is a Roguelike and not a classical CRPG, because Roguelikes already are the definition of a turn-based RPG that's independent of story (in the sense that it doesn't need one and seldom offers an elaborate one). From there it's a comparatively small step to not using language, if it wasn't for the second aspect ....

... which is that the more intricate the RPG mechanics are, the higher the need to explain them with words. Sure, you can use symbols for Strength, Armor, Attack etc. but you couldn't describe abstract and complicated concepts like e.g. THAC0. And even if you could depict with symbols what kind of weapon a specific item is or what effect a certain spells has, in a tactical game players would probably want to know more about how they actually work in detail, they'd want more info then "this is a hammer" and "this spell casts a fireball".

Anyway, I just now remembered there is a freeware RPGMaker game in which you were playing a young lion, and even though I haven't really played it for long, I recall that you'd communicate with the other animals only by universal symbols in speech bubbles. I don't know though how the typical JRPG menu combat was handled, I'd suspect that it had words regardless. And sadly I can't remember the game's name either ...

EDIT:
I found the game, but apparantly it does use language in menus and later on even in dialogues a lot, so it doesn't qualify. Anyway, just in case anyone was interested in it, it's free for download here:

Leo & Leah: A Lion's Love Story (or on GameJolt)

I never understood the point of having THAC0 to begin with. I was quite relieved when I played Planescape Torment that there was an option in one of those unofficial patches to make it more digestible or rational for modern gamers. Anyway, I'm sure similar systems could be simplified without leaving out the needed depth for a CRPG although it would probably require more work and it would be a risky project that's for sure.

This thread kind of gave me inspiration to want to create a RPG light game where there's no text or voice, only body language, symbols and people's actions as communication. I think I'll suggest it to a friend who's graduating from a Computer Science program specializing in video gaming this spring.