I think our posting at the same time means we are now at cross-purposes, Flixerflax
Setting aside the 'what is really an RPG and what is not' argument for the moment it still comes down to emphasis.
I speak as a person who owns, plays and has finished (Often several times) Diablo 2, Kult: Heretic Kingdoms, Seal Of Evil, Titan Quest, the original Dungeon Siege... You get the idea. I'm not at all averse to playing the games. Indeed, by now I can honestly say I'm not bad at them.
An 'Action-RPG' as the term suggests is mainly about action and it is action-driven. Everything exists as either an excuse to let you kill vast numbers of things or a way to make you better at killing them.
With an RPG, combat is very much secondary. Evasion is frequently an option because the point of the game is not to fight stuff, it's to accomplish goals. It's character- and story-driven.
So it's not an insult to say something is or is not an 'Action-RPG' - it's a classification
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As a digression, I object to the
term 'Action-RPG' because it's misleading. The entire point of an RPG (As anyone who has played the pen & paper games the computer games are derived from will tell you) is characterisation. It is simply playing a ROLE as the title suggests. That doesn't mean a choice between whether to use an axe or a sword, but how your character will react as a person. It's freeform acting. Maxing out stats is not role playing.
