Okay.  Valkyria Chronicles has been compared to games like Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy, and Tales of Vesperia on this site for some time now.  I happen to own VC and I love it.  Still, it is NOTHING like the games it's being compared to.  Somebody help me out, here.  Am I missing something?  Isn't it just Advance Wars in 3D? 

It's not a JRPG.

It falls in line with common SRPG's like Fire Emblem and Shining Force, albeit the more action oriented layout when you're choosing the actions (which made the game much easier than the referenced SRPG's)

Fire Emblem and Shining Force are both JRPGs. Strategy RPGs like that are a sub-genre. "JRPG" is a term used to distinguish the Japanese made RPGs from the non-Japanese made RPGs. There is a difference though between games like Fire Emblem and games like Advance Wars (which is not a JRPG).

Some games from Japan, though, are listed as RPGs when they are in fact not. The most common of these is Zelda.

Nope. It's a turn-based shooter.

It has much more in common with Advance Wars than JRPGs or SRPGs.

I just have no idea any more. I give up.

SRPG's are as equal a Subgenre as JRPG's and WRPG's are. There are intrinsic differences between the subgenres that put them completely apart from one another. That's like saying that Demon's Souls is a JRPG as well, when it has nothing in common with an JRPG.

I haven't seen Zelda being called a RPG, but I wouldn't find it odd that someone did. Heck, i've seen someone saying that Far Cry 2 was a RPG XD 

See what happens when video game genres are allowed to breed with whatever they want to! Now, nothing makes sense anymore. It used to be so simple when all we had was Pong.

Let's make a pong rpg.

*edit*  with a FPS battle system

In my book it is classified as a SRPG.
But I think you should let it go.