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HoloDust on 14 March 2025
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archbrix said:

I guess I would go with Zelda being better suited for "adventure" and games like Uncharted I would label as "action" instead. It used to be much easier to label games between action (Castlevania), adventure (Zelda) and RPG (Final Fantasy) but these days there is so much action in many RPGs and action games have a lot of adventure in them... the lines blurred long ago. It's true the term "action/adventure" can certainly fit Zelda or Uncharted by pure definition, yet I think of those two series as very different game types/structures/experiences. Personally, I would categorize them separately but if you wanted to broaden the category to include both I could see that too.


I remember back in days both reviewers and players used to label what is now known as action-adventure games as arcade adventures, being mix of skill-based gameplay of games in arcades, which were action oriented, whether it's fighting, shooting or platforming, and computer adventure games that are based on exploration and puzzle solving.

So, yes, Zelda was arcade adventure...though it did dabble with light RPG elements (apart from Zelda II that actually is action-RPG), so it's probably closer to modern crop of those games, action-pseudo-RPGs or action-RPG-lites, we really don't have name for action-adventure/action-RPG hybrids yet, like newer Assassin's Creed games, Horizon Zero Dawn or Ghost of Tsushima, than fully fledged action-RPGs.

Zelda, Metroid, Tomb Raider, GTA are all classified as action-adventures, but do they feel and play differently, so it is natural that there are subgenres.

Witcher is in the poll because, for reasons only known to them, Eurogamer put it in the poll, and this whole thread is to see how VGC votes in that poll.

Notice that Zelda is in second place in EG poll, so, if you disregard Witcher, out of actual action-adventures, Zelda takes the lead, but then again, I have no idea how those 25% percent for Witcher would be spread across other games. My guess is that if there was GTA as an option (which is really bizarre omission, when RDR is there, and GTA is far more popular), spread would be quite different.