dtgreene: They lack combat that is determined by character skill rather than player skill, and therefore don't have
what I might consider the defining aspect of being an RPG.
Edit: Also, did you mix up Final Fantasy Legend (turn-based RPG, actually SaGa) with Final Fantasy Adventure (Zelda-stype action game with some Final Fantasy flavor)?
Firebrand9: Bolded for effect. Save being pedantic for a thread worthy of it.
Your character increases in capability. The action part of the "action RPG" genre is fairly important here, given that the player ACTS in order to complete game ACTIONS. The skill portion in that genre is displaced to some degree to the actual player, rather than the character. This is why sub-genres were created. Namely, *Action* RPG. This sort of black and white thinking you're displaying just plain mental laziness.
And, no, I don't "Mix things up", certainly not in a field I devoted 21 years to programming in. FFA is most definitely an Action RPG (see above for handy description). Why in the hell would I mix that up with a turn-based combat RPG like FFL? And, especially in a thread on similar games. Just because they're for the same system? Because they both have Final Fantasy in the title? You realize being condescending in assumption and being wrong constitutes irony, right?
Stat increases are neither sufficient nor necessary for a game to be an RPG; in fact, it really isn't a genre-determining factor at all. Consider that it appears in many other genres, including sports games, of all things.
Another problem is that I feel many people's use of the term RPG is too broad, leading to it being applied to games (like the Zelda series) that play nothing like an RPG. That is why I choose my definition of RPG to only include games with RPG-like combat and exclude games with action-style combat. You should be able to determing a game's genre just by looking at a bit of the action. Having the player die in a bottomless pit followed by a screen showing the number of lives left (as happens in Zelda 2) is not the sort of thing you see in an RPG.
Also, you were applying the "Action RPG" title to Final Fantasy Legend in your other post, where (regardless on one's feelings of whether that classification is even a valid one in the first place) it clearly doesn't apply; there's nothing actiony about the game, as the outcome of combat actions is dependent solely on stats and the game's awful PRNG.
