| sugarEXpress said: Much much fail in your thoughts ... first of all we have to consider all game elemets if we want to categorize in genres b/c u see a classic Adventure game is nothing without it's story rly ... no one cares about the ill logic puzzels it's all about the story. Now no one can blame you for beeing confused about the genres. The main "problem" is that for generating a stronger feeling of progress you have the RPG elements in nearly every game so it's realy hard to consider which game is an RPG an which not. On a side note the genre Action-Adventure is crapiest bull crap of crap crap b/c if someone say to me this game is an Action-Adventure is generealy have no idea what this game lookes like. Just compare Metroid Prime to Super Metroid or Ico .... now there are similarities but they are also shared by other genres. Now from what i know there are some core elements which define genres and allthough i can't remember all of them here are some which could be interesting: Adventure: Story Shooter: Level Design RPG:Character Progression Jump'n'Run: Player Progression RTS: Level Design These are the primary things which drive me to play on in the corresponding genre. So for the debate: RPG vs Strategy. You have to admidt that there are some elements of strategy in the RPG genre like water is good vs fire etc but are these things what drive you through the game? Are realy these little strategic moments the force behind the game? Or are you interested in maxing your character out, exploring his story or creating your own story with this character to make him the brave warrior or the bright wizzard he could be? Therefore you have mostly different paths you can go in true RPGs. For example the spheroboard in FF10 or the different classes in Secret of Mana 3. In game which only get some RPG elements for the better overall feeling there is simply just one possible way or the cusomization options are not very broad like for example in Batman:AA (you eventually just get all the stuff) or Infamous. Now strategy games generaly involve very little of overall advancement. There are tiers, but progress is not permament and in the next level you have to start from the beginning. The most important thing in strategy games are the levels, that's partly why it's so important to have fog of war. The player have to explore the map, the player have to be surprised and awarded for exploration. Like killing creep camps in WC3 to get items or exploring a hidden mineral field in C&C:RA. Now ofc the battle is big part of RTS but most of the time it's building base adopting to the Level Design and to new units(yours and of your enemy) and gaining an edge in resources. |
I will ignore the bolded. 
I'm going to address some things. Firstly, you cannot have more than one factor when classifying something. It is always a question of "Is it X?" or "Is it not X?". Then you split it from there. By having more than one variable you will make it very subjective, and it would make the point of classification moot. Otherwise if somebody found that the gameplay of 2 games is similar, but the story of one is more similar to another what genre would they categorize it as? Video Games are categorized by their gameplay, and that is why I only mentioned gameplay.
Now lets get to the point of what is the core gameplay of what genre. The only thing I'm going to do here is ask two questions, so I can be clarified on what you mean. 1. Do you think that Little King's Story and Pikmin are Strategy games? 2. If not, what genre are they of or share most in common with?
