Have you played it g-value? It is less of a RPG than Zelda games quite honestly. I cannot begin to imagine why it has that label.

It was a very beautiful game. The combat was boring beyond belief though. Exploration was unbelieably tedious. The weapon system was pointless. The special attacks worthless almost. Boss battles were bland as hell. Story was extremely weak on top of all this. Extremely pretty though.

No, but the people who made Muramasa calls it an rpg. Who am I to say its not? Also, I've played Odin Sphere (a game just like Muramasa and was made by the same people) and that game qualified to be an rpg in my book. I guess thats just me though.

It has more in common with Contra than it does with any RPG. If Nintendo called SMG2 a FPS should it be compared to Halo? If you liked Odin Sphere then I would suggest you try it as I hear people loving both. I never played Odin Sphere though so I can't compare the two. I was being serious with my Zelda comparison by the by. The only real difference is Muramasa has "levels." Of course the levels are almost entirely pointless, but they are there. It does nothing but limit your sword selection, and sword choicereally only increases damage.

It gets repetitive and formulaic, but I still loved it. By far Vanillaware's best game to date.

It's also very much an "action RPG", it has experience based stat growth, a unified world to explore, NPCs, shops, dungeons... sure it may play a bit more like a brawler, but I wouldn't hold that against it.

It has more in common with Super Paper Mario than it does Contra... and guess what Nintendo calls SPM?

Well, the defining attributes of JRPG appear to be:

1. Must have a plot.

2. Must have a leveling system.

So I guess Muramasa is as much a JRPG as Final Fantasy when you put it in those terms.

To me, role-playing means that the player actually gets to have some role in the story, as opposed to just passively watching videos and reading text. Games like Heavy Rain and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories are more of an RPG than anything Square-Enix has ever made.

In my opinion, the most underrated game this gen is The Dark Spire. It's a great old-school dungeon crawler with loads of style that got lambasted by reviewers for its difficulty and lack of mainstream appeal.

Read the title of this thread very closely please.

The Dark Spire is a role playing game...

I guess it's kinda underrated. Though it did had it's flaws of repetitive combat and backtracking, IMO.