Btw, there are STILL no 4G phones. What was that 'Agito Mobile' trailer running on in 2007?

Believe it or not Nintendo classfies Zelda games as RPGs.

They're as much Action RPGs as anything else really.

A bit off topic, but I'll make my point right away.

RPGs have some common traits that makes them RPGs.

- Random Encounters (Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate, TES: II Daggerfall)

- 'XP' based system

- Stats oriented as opposed to only item oriented (Zelda)

- much more...  Zelda has none of the above!

Secret of Mana is an Action RPG (turn based only in the sense that you have to wait for the weapons to 'load'. Zelda is not. As much as I love Nintendo, they are wrong on that one!

It's called marketing.

I'm going to cross the parts that aren't always in RPGs.

You're right about stats, but even that probably isn't universal.

I'm not saying RPGs must have all of those in order to be an RPG. My point is that Zelda (with the exeption of Zelda II) has none these 'traits'.

Let's leave this and go on with the Topic at hand (OP's topic).

I would argue that the management and gradual increase of stats are what make an RPG an RPG.  They're what differentiate a game like GoW or Zelda where you increase in power but there are not specific stats, from games like Kingdom Hearts and Dark Cloud.

The only way I've come up with to classify a game as an RPG:
Elements of the game (damage, stat leveling up, hit percentage, etc) are number based, i.e. usually hinge on a dice/RNG.
This is not so in Zelda

When in the devil do you use stat management in Kingdom Hearts?

You don't directly manage them, but they are there, and they gradually increase as you level up.  This is what dictates how much damage you do as well as how much damage you take.  Perhaps putting "and" in between management and gradual increase in stats was a misnomer, though I bet I could argue that the gradual changing of equipment combined with the choice for what type of player you want to be could constitute stat management.  But the basics are that your character must have some kind of stats, and these must be what determine your characters attributes in battle.  Otherwise it is just an action or adventure game with a nice story.

But you have stats accrued by either experience or items in many games, particularly action ones. You acquire points to increase your damage in God of War, but itms to increase your health - you can do points or items in Odin Sphere. It's nothing but items in Zelda and Metroid.

Are the Metroidvanias RPGs, too?

This definition does not sit with me.