Yes, absolutely. It may not have pre-made characters but it's still a game with rich story, and I'd argue one in which story drives the game, unlike most of those games you mentioned earlier.

Yes. Even 1 and 2. Lesser story? Sure. But still story-based. I'd argue the essentialism of the RPG genre requires a story, even if it's bare-bones.

I disagree, and in fact I'm of the opinion that the only video game genres to *require* a story are visual novels (and kinetic novels, but those are a subclass of video novels and are arguably not games).

In particular, when it comes to story, I don't see how RPGs have to be any different from, say, action games in that regard.

(Incidentally, when looking for an RPG to play, I consider "story-based" to be a negative factor. I'd rather just form a party of adventures and start fighting enemies for XP and gold without having to deal with any story the developers decided to include, at least when I'm first being introduced to the game.)

Wouldn't Super Mario Brothers 1 qualify has having a story? (This is a game that I've never seen anyone call an RPG.)

RPGs require a story; having a story doesn't make it an RPG.

What you're describing -- "RPG but devoid of story" -- I would probably call a strategy game of sorts. (Or an action game, depending on how it's designed.)

Genre lines and definitions are imprecise at best. You know what you like. You're also already aware that many people [including myself] do consider story a deep, core requirement of being an RPG. It's entirely possible to enjoy a game [that may or may not be an RPG] for its mechanisms and not its story, just as it's possible for one's own internal "Platonic ideal" of an RPG to require having a story.

TBH, "RPG" is probably the least salient of the genres, and probably should be relegated to a trait or sub-genre at best.

But we're away from stat inflation, which affects many different genres. Is it stat inflation when something [e.g., carrying capacity of ammo, or uses of an ability] goes from being limited to unlimited?

I would argue probably not if the game literally stops tracking.

On the other hand, if you have a situation like SP in Disgaea 1 or 2, where it effectively becomes unlimited at high levels, then that could be considered an example of stat inflation. (At level 9999, you have 5 digit SP, and the most powerful spells have 3 digit costs; if you factor in equipment, your SP can get far bigger, but SP costs do not increase further.)

Incidentally, Disgaea 3 tried to fix this by adding another way to power up your skills; by spending mana (a resource gained by killing enemies, much like XP); this increases the power of the skill significantly, but increases the SP cost by a much bigger factor. While this makes SP meaningful, it comes at a cost; skills are so powerful that HP and defense become meaningless, as every attack that hits is going to be an instant kill. At this point the *only* way to tank is to use an evade tank. Disgaea 4 also has this issue, but apparently stacking certain evilities (passive abiliti4es) may allow damaged to be reduced to below the character's max HP.

(Worth noting that, starting in Disgaea 2, ghosts can regenerate SP, but this becomes pointless once SP becomes irrelevant. Then again, Disgaea 2's ghosts were limited by not being able to use a staff, so their magic wasn't that good, but at least you can recruit one early in the game, and in the PSP version magichange can be used to temporarily give this SP regen to a staff user.)