Something I've been wondering about for a while, especially since Fallout 4's release and often being accused of being "a good game, but not a role-playing game." Usually what people mean by that is that there are few meaningful story decisions made by the player. And yet, for twenty years now, Diablo-style ARPGs have been happily classified as RPGs, with generally absolutely no decisions made by the player at all. So I'm curious; why do you think that is? While obviously the focus is on skill-trees and explosions, I don't see any reason there couldn't be more in-depth stories and good dialogue trees in a game like Torchlight or Path of Exile or Diablo.

While I see your point I honestly like having the simplicity of a game like Diablo or Torchlight for when I've been playing something more cerebral all day and I just want a break; lots of killing and looting, not so much thinking.

What does role-playing have to do with decisions?
One could argue almost any game with a story aspect is role playing game.

Including most first person shooters.

Divine Divinity, Sacred 1 and Sacred 2, all say hello.

Divine Divinity and Sacred 2 are not isometric.

WHAT?!

Thread title talked specifically about isometric games but of course there are other games too where one can be annoyed at player choices being irrelevant or non-existant.

Games where you level up you might pick different combat stats to invest points in, leading to slightly different combat for you. Usually has no effect on the game's world or story though.

They are probably thinking the second game, Divinity original Sins, or dragon commander...

Divine Divinity as I recall was isometic, and used sprites. Although I only played like 15 minutes of it.

I thought Van Helsing was story based? But yeah, no one has made an actual rpg version of an arpg. It's all about grinding for levels, skilltrees, and loot. One day someone will make one though. :)

What about Stories: The Path of Destinies?
It even has 'Stories' in the name.

Hmmm... Well RPG has 2 tones. Either way you're Role Playing.

Let's dissect this. In olden times (before Pen & Paper fantasy games), you had card and board games. Neither of which are that complex, and the role of a player doesn't really change the names of the game in any way. You aren't a different person, even if you're transferring thousands of dollars in play money to build a hotel on Park Place.

Then there's miniatures and wargames. 40k, infantry games, WW2, etc. These are more strategy games, large scale and I've seen them playing pulling out rulers to get uber precise on how much they could move their platoon of units. While the sets look beautiful, I don't see myself playing them.

Then we get to more video games. I can't help but recall an arcade Ghostbuster's game, or the infamous Altered Beast where you play 1 person in a specific set of scenarios in order to save the kidnapped girl (princess?). This is drastically different from other games like pacman, centipede, or the others (but similar to Robo-cop). Actually the game Altered Beast is heavily different from other similar games like Mario, although namely heavily on action and less on platforming, still I wouldn't really call it a RPG of any description.

The first RPG games probably comes with both D&D, and in turn other unrelated games that went to console (ShadowRun, Final Fantasy, and others) and less to the heavily action oriented games. Although PC had Ultima and Questron (I'm sure I'm forgetting some LARGE important games, but I haven't played them so I can't refer to them, sorry :( )

Let's back up then. The 'Action' part denotes probably a heavier emphasis while still being a RPG type game. What I see for an RPG game is where you play a specific role, and you of course have character growth of some kind. This takes other games like the Shinobi series out since you never grow or have other types of roles (In those other games you're just trying to get to the end of a number of challenges, but you have all the powers at the beginning, assuming you can master them)

I think that's really what it's about. Growth. Be it better items and loot drops (Diablo series, Torchlight, Sacred), or more level/skill focus (ShadowRun, NWN), or maybe purely story like Visual novels (VallHall-A, and Long Live the Queen).


RPG I think really it comes down to progression/growth over time, and limiting to some subset of abilities, and probably 1 person, as well as talking to people and/or quests (for lore, things to do, or story progression). Of course how you slice that you add a second or third Genre to it, Action, Japanese, Puzzle, or other, and it completely changes how the RPG is approached.


TL;DR: Meh, this post seems to have turned into a random thought rant with little structure...

I've never called Diablo an RPG and I always cringe when someone does. It's a hack'n'slash.

Anyway, the difference between those and Fallout 4 is obviously that Diablo was always Diablo, while Fallout games used to be all about the story and choices.

Not neccesairly. Something can be good and yet have some flaws, that are more important to some people and not important to others. For example combat in Costume Quest is very repetative. I enjoyed the game regardless, for the fun concept and humor, but I could easily see someone say "it's a good game but too repetative" and I could not possibly argue.

Hmmm I don't know if I agree with that. There were random quests which you could accept or refuse, which was in it's own way roleplaying. Then there was the great voice acting. 'My sign was stolen by kobolds!' and talking to the kobolds, getting their sign back, and then killing them when they thought they could defeat you...

This is more than purely hack&slash. A pure hack&slash is probably closer to some of those dungeon crawler games, where you have a 4-person party like Dungeon Hack or Legend of Grimrock. Or more like the rogue-like games where 95% of what you're doing is that. Although I don't disagree there is a lot of hacking and slashing in Diablo and related games. I'm just not satisfied calling diablo and related games purely hack&slash.

Diablo 2, had far fewer quests and options, and was more hack&slash. As for Sacred Gold, and Sacred 2, TONS of quests, even if it was basically a Diablo game single player MMO.
Now I have the urge to play Costume Quest...

There are a few points that i consider crucial for a game to be considered an RPG. In particular:

1. The player is only giving orders to the PCs, not directly controlling them. For instance, to attack, the player tells the character to attack, and chooses the target of the attack. The player does not actually directly control the attack.
2. The success of such an action is determined by the character's skills, not the player's. Therefore, the player's aim with a ranged attack is irrelevant; it is up to the attacker's and defender's stats, along with the RNG (or, for table top games, a dice roll), to determine whether the attack is a hit or a miss.
3. Some form of PC persistence. Once all the opponents in a combat are eliminated, or an encounter is survived another way, the PCs continue to exist. (This criterion is intended to eliminate pure strategy games such as chess, in which, once you defeat your opponent, your surviving pieces don't really exist any more; your next match of chess is with a new board with a new set of pieces, unlike in an RPG.)