Question What features make a game an RPG? And is Elden Ring, or other FromSoft games, an RPG?

[Zloth]

ARPGs can do that too. I would say that something like Titan Quest or Torchlight for example don't include any other points than the first either.

I think they have a bit more because they have classes, but I was going to go there next. Also, the action RPGs are often pretty hard to distinguish from games like the Batman games, AC Odessey, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and so on. Immersive sims are another genre hard to push out from under the RPG umbrella.

Like @VillainousVelKoz said, it's a bit of a spectrum. What's more, the target isn't something like 480nm, it's more like "sorta bluish," so there are lots of turquoise and blue'ish violet games to wonder about.

Yeah, no disrespect to JRPGs—they're not my favourite but I've played a few in my time—but I don't consider them to be RPGs and I don't think that opinion is very controversial. That doesn't make them bad, it just makes them a different thing.

No worries about disrespect - I'm trying to oust the whole "RPG" term. At least you're limiting your destruction to just one subgenre.

As you say, it's true genealogically too, as well as mechanically. RPGs as we use the term come from Western tabletop RPGs like D&D. Those tabletop RPGs are all about that open choice-led experience. JRPGs have a different genealogy that doesn't include that kind of free-wheeling dungeonmaster-led experience.

I'm not so sure about that history. They have, shall we say, common ancestors. There's a reason why the Final Fantasy games have an "Ultima" spell. But they did follow a very different path - one dominated by consoles instead of PCs.

You WILL see a lot of choice, though, it's just not in the narrative or character appearance. I think the variety in skills & spells the materia options in FF7 give you easily rival the skills & spells you can pick from in Baldur's Gate, and you aren't stuck with your choices in FF7. FF10's skill tree is very complex, and pretty huge as well.