Technically six flavors-- weapons, tech, psi, stats, O/S, and softs. There's something useful to every build focus in all of them.

I feel like I had this discussion one hundred times already (no, not here, in other forums and in real life).

I think the points from 2 onward that OP makes can be true. If a game gives you the right feelings an makes your experience memorable, well, who cares about (e.g.) balance in the skill trees. The AIM is to make a memorable game, and usually having a balanced skill tree is an INSTRUMENT functional to that aim. If LG managed to serve us something that's called a masterpiece by the 95% of the people who played it neglecting such an important instrument, well, kudos to them. I f they did, that came would really be better? Yes, but very marginally, because awesomeness is like infinity: if you multiply awesomeness for awesomeness it is still awesome the same.

Ok, now to the first point.
The problem is not if sshock 1, 2,Torment or pac-man IS an RPG. Everyone knows what HE means is an RPG, but the concept is NOT universal. When you play a "role playing game" without a PC, you (and hopefully your friends) interpret a character and you master (narrator,call him in whatever way you prefer) describes you the world in which you are in and the interactions between your character and the world. You decide what the character does and the Master tells you what happens if you do that.

As you can see, in this definition there is no indication of ANY game mechanics, if you have an inventory or not, if the skills of the character have at least "n" choices, if you can or can not speak with someone and if you can or cannot choose what to tell to that someone or if the history has one or 1200 possible endings.
You play a role. All the fun is BEING that someone. In tournaments (yes, there exist tournaments in "tabletop" RPG) you are rated for the ability to solve the story (sacking the bad guy or solving the mystery or whatever) and how well you interpreted the character you had to play(if it is written you are mean, better for you to be); nobody cares of how well you threw your dices: that's luck, not ability, and, strictly speaking, when you use the statistical mechanics of the game, you are not "roleplaying": you are solving a situation that can not be solved (or you prefer not to solve) talking you way out. BTW; I payed some totally diceless tournaments.

Ok, back to PC games. IMHO, If a guy swears, screams and spit to the ground when he is playing Doom, well sorry everyone, but HE is playing an RPG.
If another guy is only after the best build and is skipping the dialogues when is playing Torment, well, he IS NOT playing an RPG.

A peculiarly vocal "Church" of RPG states that a PC game is or is not an RPG if it gives you "different choices" that can "influence" the game. I can see how choosing what skill you will learn or making moral choices can help you identifying yourself with your character, but I can't really say that it IS mandatory for the interpretation experience: it is you that are roleplaying in your head, not the PC. A PC will never have the needed inventive to describe an entire living world as a human Master does, so the number of choices you have end up to be more or less irrelevant, because many, many more are precluded by the game itself, by its own structure. Think: Did you ever had a chance, as The Nameless One, to choose to became a Duster for the rest of Eternity? Or to kill yourself in Baldur's Gate, once you knew who your father was? No. You could not. My best interpretation in a RPG tournament (and i am not that good) ended when I decided that my scoundrel, right before the "boss fight" for "all the power of the world", said to the master "screw this, i'm outta here: I value my skin more than that". I was not supposed to, but for how I interpreted that character, it was the smartest thing to do. You will never had the chance to do that, in a PC game, never, ever anything it was not thought before by the game designers.

So, no PC game is truly an RPG and EVERY PC game is an RPG. PC-RPG is a generic label used to throw at us software, implying often a sort of micromanagement of resources, while this micromanagement is not the focus of narrative action; is it REALLY so important to decide which QUANTITY of micromanagement is enough to qualify the game as "an RPG"?

Can we move on, as a culture? Thanks.
Sorry for the rant.

*sigh*
Yeah. This derailing is precisely why I kinda hoped that no RPG discussion will take place. It's utterly pointless. Buut I guess it's a good thing that so few people can come up with negatives as far as SS2 goes.

It is not difficult to understand and I wonder why the confusion since the genre has been with us for a long time. First of all the correct term is Action RPG not FPSRPG. The genres are very easy to explain.

An RPG has a character that grows and levels as he progresses in the world. Even if at level 1 you find the Big @ss Sword of Destruction you won't be able to wield it since you will lack the proper levels either overall or in your stats.

The FPS on the other hand, you have the same dude going in as is coming out. He finds a weapon and he uses it, he sees an unoccupied tank and climbs on it and starts blasting away. There are no prerequisites for using stuff other than finding it.

Now comes the Action RPG vs the normal RPG. It is an issue of combat mechanics. A normal RPG has the characteristics of pausing and issuing orders, turn play, etc. The Action RPG removed this and made the combat free flowing. That is it. That is why Diablo, Deus Ex and this game all fit into the Action RPG category. Your character gains exp, gains new abilities but the combat is not like a traditional RPG.

So don't break your heads about it.

The other thing to mention, is that nowadays I don't think people need to be disappointed with gameplay anymore. We don't live in the age of forums but in the age of streaming video. Anyone who is not sure about the game, just has to go to Youtube and search for a Let's Play or Walkthrough of the game, and you can then see the first few minutes or hours of the game and see if it is to your liking. The only issue nowadays with games is not gameplay since you really can see it now and not just trailers, but whether your PC can run a certain game or if the game is buggy.

I haven't played SS2 yet but I really liked what I saw in the Walkthrough. So I will be getting it when I cut down on the whole bunch of games I have been piling up. Curse you GOG! :P

> Even if at level 1 you find the Big @ss Sword of Destruction you won't be able to wield it since you will lack the proper
> levels either overall or in your stats.

That's far from being a universal RPG feature. (Features, actually - whether a system is level-based and whether there are level/stat requirements on gear are separate issues.)

The best part is that if you try to tackle the topic in a comprehensive and exhaustive way, the only persons that will read your friggin' wall of text will be the ones that already kinda have an opinion similar to yours. => 1 hour of typing (almost) down the drain.

Sad, sad 1st rule of the tl;dr.

Or disagree strongly, for the sake of trolling :-P Still, it might help a few people, so it's worth it. I don't really care for opinion of people with an attention span of a goldfish all that much anyway.

@OP: I agree completely with your evaluation of the game's changes once you leave the ship. More run-n-gun than anything else, but some might find it a welcome relief from all that came before. The ending could've been a heck of a lot better, too.

Still one of my all-time faves, though.

Oh, well, in the land of Meh, where Tl;dr reigns supreme, even trolling is a form of caring... XD

aaaand yes, I think of replied to your critics anyway: Sshock 2 if a fantastic game, so good that faults that could kill a lesser game are barely noticeable. I am not deniyng them, just putting them on scale.
Just to remain on Looking Glass: Thief had bad graphics even for the day and in the last part the game mechanics went partially wasted due to the "new" enemies (you can not hit them on the head if they have no head...). Is it still one of the greatest games I ever played? Hell, yes. Would be better without spiders and assorted "thingies" roaming around? Sure, yes. Is less awesome? No, because as I already said, awesome - "anything that is not awesome", it equals still to frigging' awesome.

It is interesting to note, though, that much of any discussion, this one included, is due to the fact that we associate to the same word a different meaning (RPG, in this case, or also "horror"), without realizing that the problem is not in how we perceive something, but in how we choose to describe it.

Some guy complained in the SS2 review page here on GOG that you're just playing a maintenance guy, fixing the ship up. Well sure, if you're one of the last human survivors and the entire ship is wrecked, it's normal to do all the "silly" maintenance tasks to progress. Thats why this isn't a Doom game where you hold the fire button till your fingers start to bleed. I never ever judged or questioned a single obstacle in the System Shock 2. They all made sense even if they were ridiculous at first glance. And thats why SS2 was and still is so unique. The reason why you walk from A to B and to C are various tasks and you shoot stuff in between. What more would you ask for?

Thats why i consider System Shock 2 as FPS/RPG sci-fi horror adventure. It's a FPS game but has RPG elements and because it has a very complex story and long gameplay, it's also an adventure.

This isn't a statement of opinion, it's a statement of fact. A wrong statement of fact. What the guy you're describing is doing is "roleplaying while playing an FPS". That doesn't make it an RPG, any more than someone onanising to Natalie Portman makes Star Wars a porno. Yes, he is playing an RPG, because PS:T is an RPG. What he's doing is playing it badly. If I use a wrench to drive nails, does that magically transform the wrench into a hammer? No, it doesn't. It makes me someone who shouldn't be driving in nails. Congratulations, you've demonstrated why precisely nobody uses this uselessly reductionist definition of an RPG. If someone asks you what kind of game Doom is, and you tell him it's an RPG, they'll quite rightly think you're deranged.

Look, this isn't nearly as difficult as you're striving to make it be. "RPG" is not a description, it's a label. It is a convenient three-syllable shorthand to denote a broad gaming genre with certain common characteristics. Gaming jargon is full of these. Is Star Fox an "FPS" because you shoot things from a first-person perspective? No. Is Half-Life a "platformer" because you jump onto platforms? No. Is Painkiller a "collectible card game" because you collect cards? No. Is poker "turn-based strategy" because it's played in turns and has strategy? No. And finally, is any "game" in which you "play" a "role" an "RPG"? No, no, a thousand times nnnnoooooooooooooo.

Trying to define what is an RPG and what isn't is utterly pointless since everyone has different ideas about it. It's been tried a billion times before, there is no single definition that everyone will be happy with. Might as well forget about it.

Exactly my point. Thanks for the clarity of exposition.

EDIT: @ ZiylonBane: I said that it is sustainable BOTH that EVERY PC game IS and IS NOT an RPG DEPENDING on what you THINK it is a proper definition of RPG, giving examples. "RPG" is a label, yes. Convenient? I don't think so.
Since we are in this moment practically demonstrating that NO ONE has the same idea of what this label means, in my opinion "RPG" it is UTTERLY USELESS as a label. So we should go on, trying to use other words.

You can see by yourself just looking around on the Internet: there is almost no discussion ongoing on what a FPS or an RTS is, but there are many on RPG. It means that is a flawed label, it does not work: let's just forget it.

No, it means the internet is full of dumb people. Is "theory" a flawed label because so many don't understand it?

Amongst normal gamers, you can say that Game X is "a turn-based RPG", and the overwhelming majority will instantly have a pretty good idea of what sort of game it is. The only thing you've accomplished by demonstrating that "RPG" is a useless term when interpreted too broadly or too literally is demonstrating why sensible people don't do that.