What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Man_Over_Game]

Arguing about what a RPG "really" is a bit of a lose-lose situation in my opinion, but if we were to go that way, I myself wouldn't call Transistor a RPG by any stretch.

But on the other hand, its gameplay is similar to, say, Diablo, and that has been called an "Action RPG" (for some reason) for decades, so there's that argument as well. Though honestly, I would come up with something new for that genre if it were up to me. "Tactical Beat-em-up" or something like that.

Action Strategy? Is that a thing yet? If not, it needs to be.

[Rakaydos]

so I went back to grinding Steel Soul hollow knight attempts, thinking about how I might optimize my route a bit more. And I tried something run-endingly stupid (early attempt at something I'd already eliminated from my route)... that worked. And now I'm looking at what I can do to capitalize on my success... and I'm feeling extremely greedy, and am afraid my luck wont support me.

So there I am, with a channeled nail, crystal heart, having beat the first colluseum trial for my 8th charm notch, 3 hours in. And I go for second trial, so I dont have to come back for the pale ore later. And it works. And with half of what I need for a coiled nail before my cheanup climb, with the city of tears (and nailsmith) right by my advance, my options are- go back in time and sequence break the Crystal Peaks pale ore, or fight Nosk immediately after the Monarch wings, then upgrade before doing my Western Cleanup Sweep.

My route after the first trial would normally call for dropping down kingdom's edge, picking up isma's tear (I made a detour to defeat dung defender before clearing out kingdom's edge), then getting Monarch wings, and climbing through ancient basin->west waterways->Mantis village->Queen's station->Queen's gardens->Hera's den-> stag back to Queen's station->Fog canyon to Greenpath->Howling Clifffs->dirtmouth shopping trip, whereupon my route gets fuzzier.

It used to be 9th notch from shop, hallownest crown pale ore, back to dirtmough for the grub on the elevator route, and get the pale ore from the Seer to upgrade the nail before watcher knights. I managed to get this far once before losing to the knights.

Except... during that run, I discovered that after returning to dirtmouth, I have just enough grubs for the GRUB pale ore. with the dreamer pale ore, there's no fighting or return to crystal peaks needed.

Except... if I get an early pale ore from crystal peaks, AND manage to repeat my coluseum feat, I can hit the nailsmith immediately, (delaying Dung defender until that trip) then get tear, monarch wings, and immediately fight Nosk. If I can manage all three feats (crystal peaks sequence break, coliseum 2, and Nosk), I can pick up the grub and seer ores and get a Perfect nail before Watcher knights.

I made a non-steel soul file to test this route- the crystal peaks sequence break is duable, but I accidently broke my fragile charms learning how, and repairs are NOT on my route. This made Coluseum 2... interesting. I just managed to beat it after a few dozen tries.

(I also looked into sequence breaking King's brand on my way up to the coluseum, but while I made the first jump, I couldnt lure the aspid into place for the second "you need monarch wings" jump. An early Shade Cloak or even Sharp Shadow might make nosk easier, but requires the sequence break AND beating Hornet 2... or going back for Hornet 2 after monarch wings, then returning to Nosk. That lower tramway gets serious traffic.)

[NeoVid]

...Yknow, the talk about what to call Transistor is making me realize how long it's been since I've played an RPG that actually let me play the role I chose. The only games I've personally played where I came up with a character concept and then was able to make every decision stay in-character were New Vegas and Undertale. Mass Effect and Witcher did a good job at it as well, but they don't have blank slate player characters. Could people give me more examples of games that would actually give me the options I need after I think, "What would my character do here?"

Anyway, the latest game to grab me... well, for the first time, I've found myself interested in a survival game. Well, second time, really... but the one I've had on my wishlist for years isn't showing any signs of actually reaching a point where it can be played, and another game with nearly the same concept beat it to the punch. While also showing up on the Game Pass, so I didn't even have to pay to try it. So I've gotten caught by Grounded, the survival game set in 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids.'

Since it's the first time I've tried a survival game, I'm sure a lot of the things that are new for me have been done dozens of times in the genre, and probably aren't even done very well, as Grounded is early access and clearly not remotely close to being finished. I'm also certain that there are basics to the survival genre that I don't know a damn thing about, since I'm going in blind. And even then, the game's addictive enough that I'm losing track of hours as I play.

[factotum]

The only games I've personally played where I came up with a character concept and then was able to make every decision stay in-character were New Vegas and Undertale. Mass Effect and Witcher did a good job at it as well, but they don't have blank slate player characters.

Not sure how the Mass Effect main character isn't a blank slate? About the only thing you pick at game start is gender and a rather nebulous background that only affects a few bits of dialogue here and there, but doesn't affect how the character plays at all. Been a while since I've played an RPG like that, been really into the Persona series and they're anything but "choose your own character"! It's rather old school today, but have you ever played Planescape: Torment? Because the whole *point* of that game is that choices have consequences--it even determines your alignment from your actions rather than you selecting it at character creation.

[Rodin]

Not sure how the Mass Effect main character isn't a blank slate? About the only thing you pick at game start is gender and a rather nebulous background that only affects a few bits of dialogue here and there, but doesn't affect how the character plays at all. Been a while since I've played an RPG like that, been really into the Persona series and they're anything but "choose your own character"! It's rather old school today, but have you ever played Planescape: Torment? Because the whole *point* of that game is that choices have consequences--it even determines your alignment from your actions rather than you selecting it at character creation.

In Mass Effect, you're always playing Shepard. You can shape what Shepard is like to an extent, but the core of the character is always the same. No matter how you play, Shepard won't run off and join Cerberus in the third game, or side with the Reapers, or decide to chuck it all and become a moisture farmer. You're always a professional soldier working tirelessly to save the galaxy. The only things that change are your attitude and your methodology.

Compare that to the OP's example of New Vegas. You were a courier, and you want revenge. That's the sum of what your character is. Maybe you think Caesar's Legion is just dandy. Maybe you support the NCR. Maybe you support yourself. The player character is far less defined than Shepard or Geralt.

[factotum]

I guess there's a whole sliding scale of "blank slate", then. I was having a go at Star Ocean: Departure the other day (ancient PSP RPG based on an even more ancient original), and the sum total of character customisation in that is that you can choose your character's first name--and even that doesn't work properly, because all the voiced dialogue still calls you Roddick no matter what you named yourself.

[GloatingSwine]

I guess there's a whole sliding scale of "blank slate", then. I was having a go at Star Ocean: Departure the other day (ancient PSP RPG based on an even more ancient original), and the sum total of character customisation in that is that you can choose your character's first name--and even that doesn't work properly, because all the voiced dialogue still calls you Roddick no matter what you named yourself.

Technically you can choose whether the voiced dialogue calls him Roddick or Ratix, by choosing whether it's in English or Japanese.

(In First Departure R you actually have the choice of two different portrait styles, the PSP ones or a high def interpretation of the original SNES ones, and two different Japanese voice tracks by different actors, the PSP ones or the original SNES ones).

Also you can change some things about Roddick, by recruiting different characters and doing different things in Private Actions with other party members and so ending up with different character relationship values you can get slightly different ending outcomes. He's not a blank slate, but he's also not quite a fixed and immutable character.

[Eldan]

...Yknow, the talk about what to call Transistor is making me realize how long it's been since I've played an RPG that actually let me play the role I chose. The only games I've personally played where I came up with a character concept and then was able to make every decision stay in-character were New Vegas and Undertale. Mass Effect and Witcher did a good job at it as well, but they don't have blank slate player characters. Could people give me more examples of games that would actually give me the options I need after I think, "What would my character do here?"

Disco Elysium, except, not? (I just like plugging Disco Elysium any chance I get. It's more or less the best RPG of all time.)

You're always a drunk, amnesiac, highly... unusual cop. And mostly your story moves along the same beat. But you get some say in how your personality manifests along the way.

[Man_Over_Game]

...Yknow, the talk about what to call Transistor is making me realize how long it's been since I've played an RPG that actually let me play the role I chose. The only games I've personally played where I came up with a character concept and then was able to make every decision stay in-character were New Vegas and Undertale. Mass Effect and Witcher did a good job at it as well, but they don't have blank slate player characters. Could people give me more examples of games that would actually give me the options I need after I think, "What would my character do here?"

Divinity: Original Sin falls into this category. You can solve problem using special powers, and even conversational decisions can have an influence on stats and abilities. Sometimes, making bad choices opens up other options, so you're often rewarded for failure. Even disagreeing with your party members comes with benefits.

Torment: Tides of Numenara was a bit like that, too, but a bit less of a hybrid between combat and conversation, and more focus on the "Failure can lead to good things" concept. You had a bunch of ways you could flesh out your personality, they just didn't usually get in the way of your options, plot or rewards (sometimes they did, not often tho).

Can't think of too many other games that do it. It's a very "western" game philosophy (it's not someone's story, it's MY story), and most developers would rather invest resources into graphics or mechanics than create several interesting branching paths for the character plot. If you create something only 20% of playthroughs can experience, you're creating 80% waste. That's why most games that do this are text-focused, since adding a few paragraphs, a new icon for a reward, and some item stats, is a heck of a lot easier than adding game physics, mechanics, and graphics for "Bust down the door".

Even in the example of the Witcher, not much content is blocked off by your decisions, since there aren't major decisions you can make that couldn't be defined as "Geralt of Rivia". That way, limiting your "options", for the sake of making little waste, comes off as a natural and fun element to most players. That's part of the reason why the game feels so big, since almost every kind of player can experience virtually everything made into the game on their first playthrough.

So instead of spending 50 hours creating more content unique to your choices, the Devs can spend 50 hours honing the content everyone experiences.

[Cespenar]

If you create something only 20% of playthroughs can experience, you're creating 80% waste.

Not necessarily, though. The most obvious point of replay values aside, the mere feeling of that freedom gives your game another strong trait, sometimes as valuable or defining as graphics, writing, or other content. Case in point, the success of the Elder Scrolls series.

[warty goblin]

Not necessarily, though. The most obvious point of replay values aside, the mere feeling of that freedom gives your game another strong trait, sometimes as valuable or defining as graphics, writing, or other content. Case in point, the success of the Elder Scrolls series.

Maybe this is just me, but I very seldom replay a game because there's an option I didn't take last time but I want to this time. I replay a game because it was fun last time and I want to do it again, just like rereading a book. If there are story choices I'll mostly end up making the same ones over again anyway.

[Man_Over_Game]

Maybe this is just me, but I very seldom replay a game because there's an option I didn't take last time but I want to this time. I replay a game because it was fun last time and I want to do it again, just like rereading a book. If there are story choices I'll mostly end up making the same ones over again anyway.

Play Fable as a good guy the first playthrough. Try to play the second one as evil, wimp out an hour through and settle for "morally ambiguous".

[Cespenar]

Maybe this is just me, but I very seldom replay a game because there's an option I didn't take last time but I want to this time. I replay a game because it was fun last time and I want to do it again, just like rereading a book. If there are story choices I'll mostly end up making the same ones over again anyway.

Personally, I'd try a new indie game or something rather than replaying a game as well, but replay value is a common enough phenomenon still.

[warty goblin]

Personally, I'd try a new indie game or something rather than replaying a game as well, but replay value is a common enough phenomenon still.

Oh I I replay stuff plenty, I just play it again more or less the same way I did the first time. I mean I'm replaying Sacred yet again, and I've been playing that for 15 years now. Generally speaking the novelty of making different choices is enjoyable than just doing what I already know to be enjoyable.

[Rodin]

Not necessarily, though. The most obvious point of replay values aside, the mere feeling of that freedom gives your game another strong trait, sometimes as valuable or defining as graphics, writing, or other content. Case in point, the success of the Elder Scrolls series.

Elder Scrolls still illustrates the point though. Yes, your character is a blank slate...but the game doesn't acknowledge that fact at any time. The story isn't "Khajit becomes head of Mage's College and saves the world" or "Nord wins the Civil War and saves the world". The story is "Generic Dragonborn saves the world". Any additional roleplaying you do is up to your own imagination.

There are very few branching paths within the Elder Scrolls games, and they are generally contained within small parts of the game world. It's almost impossible to lock yourself out of content, and replaying the same portion of an Elder Scrolls game usually doesn't give you a different result.

It's a difference in design philosophy. Create a deep storytelling experience, or create a shallow sandbox. Both have their place. What you don't see is the "deep sandbox" where a storytelling experience is matched with a large playground. There's too much waste to design that way.

[Zevox]

Maybe this is just me, but I very seldom replay a game because there's an option I didn't take last time but I want to this time. I replay a game because it was fun last time and I want to do it again, just like rereading a book. If there are story choices I'll mostly end up making the same ones over again anyway.

I am very much the same. There are games that I've re-played enough times that I've lost count that theoretically have nothing that would normally be called "replay value" (going back to titles like Ocarina of Time when I was younger, to Metal Gear Rising more recently - hell, to the fact that I've already re-played Final Fantasy 7 Remake once after first playing it a month ago, in addition to the first time through both normal and hard mode). Meanwhile there's games that have a lot of what people normally call "replay value" that I could either barely muster enough interest in to play through once or lost interest in quite quickly and never got anywhere near finishing once (every Bethesda game I've ever tried). I'm much more likely to replay a game just because it's good and I enjoyed it than because it gives me anything that changes when I do so.

Hell, just thinking over games that I played this year, I'd wager most people would say that Sekiro has less "replay value" than other FromSoft titles, since it doesn't have the variety of weapons and ways to "build" your character that Dark Souls or (IIRC, I didn't play a lot of it) Bloodborne do, yet I'm far more likely to replay Sekiro than I am to pick up Dark Souls 3 (which is the one Dark Souls title I haven't played at all), because I liked it a lot more than I ever did Dark Souls.

[Anonymouswizard]

Uh, not familiar with this game at all, but I do feel the need to say that none of that sounds like it makes the game an RPG. It's been a long time since gaining levels and such character-customization options as you power up was unique to that genre. It gets thrown into a lot of different styles of games these days.

Yeah, at this point I've stopped considering levels and character customisation 'RPG elements'. I also tend not to count most JRPGs as 'RPGs', but that's elitism.

On the RPG note, I put down Persona and picked up Shin Megami Tensei IV for the third time, because I had two forty minute train journies on Tuesday and another two on Saturday, and finally got to the first route split and the bit immediately after that.

Spoiler

Show

Well, Walter has pretty much gone full Chaos Hero by this point, while he's not at the very extremes of Chaos yet he's certainly bought into the philosophy. Meanwhile Jonathan still hasn't quite gone full Law, if it wasn't for the fact that A) I got spoiled and B) it's obvious what roles they were meant to play then I'd have sworn he's meant to be the Neutral Hero, as he actually seems less Law than he was at the beginning and is clearly expressing doubts. Especially in Blasted Tokyo, whereas Walter was still clearly Chaos Jonathan never seemed to actually take the side of Law there. Maybe Infernal Tokyo will show it better?

It doesn't help that I don't really like Isabeau. While I get what the writers were going for, I don't think it works in the setting and they should have written a character with more fire on the surface. Maybe she gets better when she reappears in the plot, as it is I don't really care about her that much.

I do have to say that the combat is much, much more enjoyable than in Persona 4. While the lack of a defence stat and the severe penalties for hitting weaknesses make it very easy to accidentally wipe out, Press Turn is just a more engaging battle system to me, and the need to occasionally recruit new demons so you can continue fusing to decent levels makes a welcome break.

Because they'll likely be more longish train journeys in the near future maybe once I've seen the first ending I get I'll buy Strange Journey Redux or IV: Apocalypse and give it a go (although I wish they'd given the MC a better design in Apocalypse). Swap between them after each ending.

[Man_Over_Game]

It's a difference in design philosophy. Create a deep storytelling experience, or create a shallow sandbox. Both have their place. What you don't see is the "deep sandbox" where a storytelling experience is matched with a large playground. There's too much waste to design that way.

Well put. I never thought about it in those words, but it's definitely true.

[Cespenar]

Elder Scrolls still illustrates the point though. Yes, your character is a blank slate...but the game doesn't acknowledge that fact at any time. The story isn't "Khajit becomes head of Mage's College and saves the world" or "Nord wins the Civil War and saves the world". The story is "Generic Dragonborn saves the world". Any additional roleplaying you do is up to your own imagination.

There are very few branching paths within the Elder Scrolls games, and they are generally contained within small parts of the game world. It's almost impossible to lock yourself out of content, and replaying the same portion of an Elder Scrolls game usually doesn't give you a different result.

It's a difference in design philosophy. Create a deep storytelling experience, or create a shallow sandbox. Both have their place. What you don't see is the "deep sandbox" where a storytelling experience is matched with a large playground. There's too much waste to design that way.

The Elder Scrolls does give you the opportunity to engage that roleplaying and imagination better, though, through its lore and setting. It's not just you looking at the wall and spinning a story to yourself.

About design philosophy, of course a good amount of design effort would be wasted with a "deep sandbox" kinda game. But what I'm saying is that loss is often less than what one'd expect because of replayability and some side effects. The "slider" between deep storytelling and shallow sandbox is not a linear, "0 to 10" thing. There are some unique interactions between those two aspects that sometimes ends up with the game being more (or sometimes less) than the sum of its parts.

[tonberrian]

Yeah, at this point I've stopped considering levels and character customisation 'RPG elements'. I also tend not to count most JRPGs as 'RPGs', but that's elitism.

On the RPG note, I put down Persona and picked up Shin Megami Tensei IV for the third time, because I had two forty minute train journies on Tuesday and another two on Saturday, and finally got to the first route split and the bit immediately after that.

Spoiler

Show

Well, Walter has pretty much gone full Chaos Hero by this point, while he's not at the very extremes of Chaos yet he's certainly bought into the philosophy. Meanwhile Jonathan still hasn't quite gone full Law, if it wasn't for the fact that A) I got spoiled and B) it's obvious what roles they were meant to play then I'd have sworn he's meant to be the Neutral Hero, as he actually seems less Law than he was at the beginning and is clearly expressing doubts. Especially in Blasted Tokyo, whereas Walter was still clearly Chaos Jonathan never seemed to actually take the side of Law there. Maybe Infernal Tokyo will show it better?

It doesn't help that I don't really like Isabeau. While I get what the writers were going for, I don't think it works in the setting and they should have written a character with more fire on the surface. Maybe she gets better when she reappears in the plot, as it is I don't really care about her that much.

I do have to say that the combat is much, much more enjoyable than in Persona 4. While the lack of a defence stat and the severe penalties for hitting weaknesses make it very easy to accidentally wipe out, Press Turn is just a more engaging battle system to me, and the need to occasionally recruit new demons so you can continue fusing to decent levels makes a welcome break.

Because they'll likely be more longish train journeys in the near future maybe once I've seen the first ending I get I'll buy Strange Journey Redux or IV: Apocalypse and give it a go (although I wish they'd given the MC a better design in Apocalypse). Swap between them after each ending.

You get bennies for having SMT IV save data when you play Apocalypse, based on the endings you clear. I think you can only transfer data once per game cycle though.

[Man_Over_Game]

Yeah, at this point I've stopped considering levels and character customisation 'RPG elements'. I also tend not to count most JRPGs as 'RPGs', but that's elitism.

On the RPG note, I put down Persona and picked up Shin Megami Tensei IV for the third time, ...

I gotta ask, what the heck is your definition for an RPG?

[Anonymouswizard]

You get bennies for having SMT IV save data when you play Apocalypse, based on the endings you clear. I think you can only transfer data once per game cycle though.

That settles it, Strange Journey before Apocalypse.

I gotta ask, what the heck is your definition for an RPG?

Story focused, varied routes due to player choices, gameplay beyond the VN baseline*. And a number of other things that escape my mind because it's 2am. Not strictly to the substantially different endings point, my best friend and I both had vastly different Disco Elysium experiences due to the character types we embraced and how we treated certain quests.

Like, either levels and character customisation aren't RPG elements, or I begin considering half the games that get released as an RPG (although as my bestie pointed out I suffer from severe 'they changed it now it sucks'ism that gives me a negative view of most modern games).

I think the breaking point for me was Nerdcubed calling Maneater an RPG. From everything I've seen it's not, it's an open world game with levels and customisation, but that doesn't make an RPG to me. CRPGs are a tricky genre to define, partially due to the 'WRPG/JRPG' split. Maybe we should just give up on the term entirely, something like Skyrim can be an 'open world action game with character progression' whereas Persona 4 can be a 'story focused life-sim/dungeon crawler with character progression'. Sure, not fast, but arguably much better fits than 'RPG' in both cases.

* Yes I'm aware this cuts off most early CRPGs**. The point is trying to get a meaningful distinction in my mind.
** Including one of my favourite games of all time, so I need a better definition. Any eventual definition probably has a lot of qualifiers, and it's either going to catch or leave out some unfortunate games.

[Rynjin]

I gotta ask, what the heck is your definition for an RPG?

I'm not the intended target, but IMO the RPG is a dead genre, at least as a meaningful term without qualifiers.

The genre has become so diluted and omnipresent that the word on its own is simply meaningless. This isn't a bad thing, really, but something that simply happens with genre definitions. "Fantasy" is pretty much the same thing these days. The Dresden Files, American Gods, and Lord of the Rings are all Fantasy novels despite the three things having pretty much nothing in common; it's only the descriptors of "Urban Fantasy", "Mythological Fantasy", and "Epic Fantasy" that give any sort of meaningful differentiation between the three.

In the same way, Diablo, Mass Effect, and Baldur's Gate are all RPGs. This is similarly meaningless without breaking it down further into "Action RPG" (formerly known as "Diablo-clone"), "TPS RPG". and "CRPG", which are all (with the possible exemption of TPS RPG and FPS RPG, which are more genre hybrids than true genres) their own distinct genre with completely different conventions and expectations, and at which point you can start to draw meaningful conclusions from the name of the genre.

[Zevox]

gameplay beyond the VN baseline*.

Setting aside the main conversation going on here, I have to ask: what does this mean? I cannot figure out what "VN" stands for here.

[Anonymouswizard]

Setting aside the main conversation going on here, I have to ask: what does this mean? I cannot figure out what "VN" stands for here.

Visual Novel. Basically everything from Fate/Stay Night to Ace Attorney.

[Zevox]

Visual Novel. Basically everything from Fate/Stay Night to Ace Attorney.

Ah, gotcha, thank you.

I'm not the intended target, but IMO the RPG is a dead genre, at least as a meaningful term without qualifiers.

There's probably something to that, although referring to it that way is more than a bit over-dramatic. I'd say it's probably fair to say that video game RPGs are, at this point, so diverse that you really do need to identify sub-genres to meaningfully categorize them. Fire Emblem and Mass Effect may not look anything alike, but when you break them down as a Japanese Strategy RPG and a Western Shooter RPG respectively, it becomes a lot easier to make sense of how they'd have a few connections across an incredibly broad genre, while nonetheless being very different from each other.

Hell, the genre is so broad that it's not uncommon for people to claim some games as RPGs where others think they're not RPGs at all. I mean, there's the classic JRPG/WRPG divide where some on the latter half of the divide can't think of the former as RPGs, obviously, but it goes well beyond that. Personally, I always scratch my head at people claiming that The Legend of Zelda is somehow an RPG, when I consider it the genre-defining Action/Adventure series*. And I still can't bring myself to think of Pokémon as an RPG, even though I honestly also can't come up with another genre for it either, due to how story-light the series is. Similarly, Dark Souls feels more like an action game series that happens to have leveling mechanics than anything I'd ever call an RPG, yet I still see some people call it that. And hell, in your own post above Rynjin you cited Diablo as an "Action RPG," but from what I've seen of that series (I haven't played it myself) it looks nothing like anything that I'd consider an action-RPG, whether that be the "Tales of" franchise or Final Fantasy 7 Remake among JRPGs, or The Witcher or Kingdoms of Amalur among WRPGs. I don't even know what I'd call it - the only thing it even looks like to me is those stages in RTS titles where you don't build anything and just micro-manage the units you're given, except obviously with just one unit instead of a group, yet obvious it isn't an RTS. Feels like it needs yet another sub-genre term of some kind of identify it, though I don't know what.

*To be fair, this is one example where I legitimately will argue that it's genuinely not an RPG at all, and those who think it is are (I think) just mistaking the term as applying to any fantasy game, unlike the other examples that I give where I can admit that my own biases are likely more in play.

[Rynjin]

And hell, in your own post above Rynjin you cited Diablo as an "Action RPG," but from what I've seen of that series (I haven't played it myself) it looks nothing like anything that I'd consider an action-RPG, whether that be the "Tales of" franchise or Final Fantasy 7 Remake among JRPGs, or The Witcher or Kingdoms of Amalur among WRPGs. I don't even know what I'd call it - the only thing it even looks like to me is those stages in RTS titles where you don't build anything and just micro-manage the units you're given, except obviously with just one unit instead of a group, yet obvious it isn't an RTS. Feels like it needs yet another sub-genre term of some kind of identify it, though I don't know what.

You would think, but Action RPG has become the replacement term for "Diablo clone"...along with ALSO being the genre title for games like the ones you mentioned.

Honestly it could probably use another terminology split at this point. I'd be fine with just going back to "Diablo-clone". We still have "Metroidvania" as a genre title, after all.

[factotum]

There are very few branching paths within the Elder Scrolls games, and they are generally contained within small parts of the game world. It's almost impossible to lock yourself out of content, and replaying the same portion of an Elder Scrolls game usually doesn't give you a different result.

That depends entirely which game you're talking about. It's certainly true of Oblivion and Skyrim, but in Morrowind you actually, for example, needed to be somewhat good at magic to become high ranking in the mage guild, and in Daggerfall there were something like six (or was it eight?) different endings you could get depending how you played it.

I gotta ask, what the heck is your definition for an RPG?

For what it's worth, *my* definition of an RPG (at least in computer terms) is a game in which the in-game abilities of your character are more important to progression than your own twitch gaming skills. I'm sure there are edge cases which don't really fit this definition, but I've gone with it for years.

[Zombimode]

partially due to the 'WRPG/JRPG' split.

About that: is there actually any profound meaning behind those terms?
At least whenever I search for definitions for western rpgs and jrpgs respectively the only thing I find is a lack of knowledge of games in those people making the definitions.

Sure, there is aesthetics. It's easy to spot the stylistic differences between theese two protagonists. But:
a) if I look hard enough I'm sure I can dig up an RPG produced in a "western" country that is stylistic different from both Kingdom Come and FF7
b) can the differences in those two games actually be attributed to a supposed "western"/"jrpg" split instead of the particular designs of the games?

[Rynjin]

About that: is there actually any profound meaning behind those terms?
At least whenever I search for definitions for western rpgs and jrpgs respectively the only thing I find is a lack of knowledge of games in those people making the definitions.

Sure, there is aesthetics. It's easy to spot the stylistic differences between theese two protagonists. But:
a) if I look hard enough I'm sure I can dig up an RPG produced in a "western" country that is stylistic different from both Kingdom Come and FF7
b) can the differences in those two games actually be attributed to a supposed "western"/"jrpg" split instead of the particular designs of the games?

JRPG for WRPG refers to actual gameplay differences, not aesthetic ones. There are Japanese made WRPGs (like Dragon's Dogma) and Western made JRPGs (like the South Park games).