theriddlen said:
JRPG is just a RPG made in characteristic Japanese style, and it is not part of every RPG. Action is standard part of every RPG - i played classic RPG's like Baldurs Gate or Icewind Dale, and i played Sacred, Gothic, TES III and Mass Effect. All of them had action, all of them were Role Playing Games. Genres are wide, and that's the point of their existence - classifying large amounts of games in one definition.
Ah, technically all of these games are cRPG - computer RPG. Amusingly, i heard many people calling RPGs that weren't build like these classic ones cRPG, as if that meant something bad.
To clarify, let me first state that I in no way consider any of my proposed subgenres to be inferiour.
I do feel that the subgenres are quite important though.
When you're talking to another person about games, it helps a lot to be able to put things in boxes.
As you say, all RPGs can be put into the RPG box, but if you sort it like that, you end up with over 40% of all games ever made. That's a big gard damn box...
That's why people like myself break them down further.
It's true that all RPGs have Action. Nearly all games do. Games like SimCity aside, the action is what makes them interesting.
However, some games have a direct focus on Action.
These games include, for instance, the First Person Shooters.
Now, looking at a game like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights, they certainly have action elements, but compared to ME, Borderlands, Deus Ex, or FPS' like CoD, MoH, Halo & UT, they don't come anywhere near those levels of it.
That is why I classify them as "Action-Adventure" and "Action-RPG", or whatever other classification fits, based on their gameplay elements.
Oh, and as a sidenote, your previous comment about "genre stereotypes [being] created by some elitists who still don't understand that world of games had moved on"... that's just BS; sorry to say
