1. The RPG where you can beat the final boss with a pretty okay set up that you built up from the story. But you can go exploring to get the best weapons, spells and levels to completely obliterate the final boss.

2. The RPG where you don't need to do any grinding you just play through the entire story and can beat the final boss with no elements of exploration whatsoever.

3. RPG where you can only beat the final boss with at least 70% completion of exploration otherwise it would be tough to beat the final boss. You have to find secret characters, weapons, items, level to a certain extent etc.

I think number 3 is the way RPGs should be in general.

dtgreene, is that you? :P

I don't think everyone has time to complete 70% of an intentionally padded out game. I usually begin losing interest way before that.

has to be

imho there are two types
A.good ones
and
B. asian rpgs

Probably a spam/bot account, forum is flooded with them now. There is another thread about gothic not working, zero games on profile (now hidden).

I think that way too many developers have forgotten what role-playing really means. It ain't looking behind every rock, nook and cranny for + 1 sword or +2 potion, it ain't thousands of useless stats and skills and other numbers, it ain't beating the final boss after months of grind and grid-raking.

dunno , the style maybe
i havent played them

Other types:
* The RPG where you can't do any exploration or "grinding" (I don't like the term) as the game doesn't let you. (Most Fire Emblem games)
* The RPG where a typical player will need to play through the sidequests, and the final boss is balanced with that in mind, but the final boss can be accessed before then and beaten with enough system knowledge and good strategies. (Final Fantasy 6)
* The RPG where you don't need to powerlevel to beat the main story, but do need to for post-game stuff; bonus points if this powerleveling is encouraged. (Disgaea series; can beat the game before level 100, but the ultimate boss is so strong that reaching level 9999 isn't enough.)
* The RPG where, at some point, you're essentially forced to do sidequests before the main storyline can progress. (Baldur's Gate 2 (Chapter 2 specifically), Romancing SaGa 1.)
* The RPG where you have to reach a certain level to continue because either you need an ability learned at a certain level, or there's an arbitrary level check. (Dragon Quest 1 can't be beaten before level 7, and beating it before level 17 isn't going to happen without TAS-level luck manipulation (though that's been managed in real time), while Crystalis's bosses can't be damaged if your level is too low, requiring you to eventually max your level (though I don't actually consider Crystalis an RPG, but that's another story).) No. Counter-example: The NES "port" of Ultima 5.
* The game is not Asian. In fact, unlike the NES Ultima 3 and 4, which were developed in Japan (I believe), this game was actually developed, I believe, by the same company that made the PC Ultimas (albeit they lacked experience with the NES).
* The game is not good. In fact, it's so terrible that it fits in the "kusoge" category. Very basic mechanics are broken (can't restore MP except via a death warp) and the game randomly eats your inputs (not technically random, but might as well be).

(For anybody who wants to rebut the claim about Ultima 5's quality, keep in mind that I am talking about the atrocious NES version, which is completely different from computer versions; computer versions are at least decent, unlike the NES version.) Except that, in the context of a computer game, those things are pretty much what the term RPG means.

(Although maybe you don't need as many stats as some RPGs, mostly WRPGs, have; 4 feels like a good number of ability scores for me.) Time to change that.

Nowadays, and that's a problem. When there's barely any role-playing, nay, good writing at all, why should those games be called role-playing? Choices, characterisation flexibility and good (or trashy, so long as you enjoy it) writing should be paramount to the genre, not munchkinnery and number-crunching. Yeah, Might, Wisdom, Charisma, Finesse or whatever you'd like to call them would be enough if you want minimalistic approach, and if not, just add about a dozen skills and you'd cover all things that matter.
Might be bit hypocritical of me, since I do enjoy some grindfest games very much (their gameplay, writing and ambience's still top notch, so I don't see why it would), and when I homebrewed a tabletop RPG ages ago, it had eight attributes, thirty two skills, and nearly forty various special traits on top of that, but then I wouldn't claim that sophistication is bad in itself, only needles complexity when it doesn't improve the gameplay and serves no practical purpose in the game.

eventually ill

What you refer to as "munchkinnery and number-crunching" is actually what drives some people, like myself, to the genre.

Things like "characterization" and "writing" are icing on the cake, so to speak, and not the core of the game.

Would you say the same thing about action games?

If you're looking for a game where the writing is the most important thing, you should be looking at a visual novel (or a VN/other hybrid, where other can be RPG), not an RPG. I'm thinking along the lines of Strength, Agility, Vitality, and one mental stat.

Thing is, we don't need 3 mental stats when any given character is likely to only find one of them important, and in fact the Charisma stat, in older TTRPGs, has not had much mechanical effect; in CRPGs it often wouldn't do anything. (SaGa Frontier at least made the CHA stat affect healing and charm effects, though I think having a stat just for charm effects didn't really make sense, and healing isn't as central as in some other RPGs (with the most powerful healing effects not even using the healing formula).)

I could go further and combing Strength and Vitality into one stat; this way, every stat would have both on offensive aspect (that is important for some characters but not others) and a defensive aspect (which is important for everybody).

Habit, nothing more. Just like fast and simple games that require good reaction and coordination are called arcade games, even most people play them at home and not in arcades.

I do agree though that even gameplay oriented RPGs (like rougelikes and Diabloids) should have a choice for player to play in different style and thus assume different roles, at least in gameplay if not in the story. There should be different ways to develop characters, not just grind to improve stats.

How about having substantially different ways to "grind to improve stats"?

(Disgaea games are examples of this. In Disgaea 1, for example, you can level up, transmigrate (reincarnate) back to level 1 with increased stat growth, level up your equipment in the item world, or even gather and combine specialists (innocents) to boost the stats of your equipment.)

Edit: Also, Disgaea 1 has weapon and technique levels that you can also increase, not to mention some specialists that affect the rate at which the character gains XP or weapon mastery.

Sorry, I think my statement was a bit ambiguous. By "different ways to develop" I meant not the ways of development, not methods of how you get exp (or other resources) to develop character. But instead the ways that character can be developed. Like different types of character, different "roles". In Disgaea do your character characteristics depend on how you grind? Do your manner of fighting depend on what path you chose - leveling up equipment or reincarnating?

It sort of depends. Some methods favor focusing on one stat (reincarnating repeatedly for bonus points, farming stat-boosting innocents), while others give more balanced growth (leveling up items that boost multiple stats, reincarnating at a high level for high "yellow bar" bonuses).

Incidentally, some of the SaGa games are worth mentioning, particularly 1, 2, and Frontier. (Maybe 3.) In these games, each character is one of 3 or 4 races, and each race has different rules for stat growth. While there's often more than one way to develop a given race (particularly in SaGa 2), some races are still better at certain things. (In SaGa 2, robots make great AGI-based fighters, but can't effectively use magic without special items that only exist in the DS remake; espers, on the other hand, are geared toward magic due to them learning special abilities that allow for spellcasting without a magic tome or staff.)