i was looking up RPG (Role Playing Games) recently, and i realised that there seem to be a lot of people who think that Zelda is not an RPG. That is really weird, i have always thought about Zelda as a RPG and it surprises me that anyone would think otherwise. I read some arguments about it, and it seems like what people do is that they compile a list of Zelda's lack of "RPGness" and conclude that Zelda does lacks too many elements to be an RPG game. This is one example i found, there are many others like it.
"There are only two ways in which Zelda could even REMOTELY almost sorta kinda not really but still yes looked at as an RPG:
You increase your hearts over the course of the game
You play the role of Link. Just like you play the role of any other video game character in any other video game.
Though there are some definite gray areas (which Zelda does NOT fall within), I think we can agree that an RPG video game generally includes at least one, if not all of these attributes:
Numerical stats which represent the non-concrete attributes of a character in a concrete way within the game world, whether or not the character is fully made aware of them (i.e. 15 strength, 10 agility, 7 stamina, 150 HP, etc.)
A system of progression by which your characters stats are increased as you play, either through hard levels and the acruing of experience points or something similar, or gradual increases in the stats as specific actions are performed.
Some kind of character specialization (i.e. character classes) which allow a character to excel at some aspects of gameplay, even at the expense of others, be it through the equipping of specialized weapons, a specific class or role choice made by the player, or sometimes naturally as certain character stats will increase and others will not based on the actions the player performs throughout the game.
A battle system that involves "dice rolls", meaning that damage, as well as other things such as accuracy are determined through some kind of system involving chance, and then possibly modified by character and enemy stats
Some kind of story interaction where the player is able to take part in the game and affect the story through interacting with characters, or at the very least, interact with NPCs through dialogue trees. Obviously this is probably the least common of all the attributes, but still a possibility.
Now, please understand me. It's not that a game needs all of these qualities to be an RPG, it's that Zelda has NONE of these qualities. Just face it, kids. Zelda is an action adventure game with puzzles."
Now the real problem is that who made up these arbitrary rules about what constitutes an RPG? No one, these are just some characteristics that most of the more popular RPGs have. RPG by the very definition are games that have you role playing. You take the role of a character, much like how an actor takes a character on stage. This is as opposed to games like Tetris, where you are just moving blocks. In Zelda, i am clearly taking the role of Link, or whatever you choose to rename him to and that in itself is the very essence of an RPG game.
