I guess I haven’t heard Souls-Like or games like Zelda or Witcher 3 (what I’d call Action Adventure I guess or RPG) called an ARPG although they fit the name well enough that maybe I have and today I’m falling on the other side of a fuzzy line.
Yes, I was referring to Diablo, PoE, Last Epoch, and the rest of the “looter” ARPG’s or what I’d just call ARPG’s. Maybe this is why the Diablo-like meme came up? To further drill in to the genre.
I think Zelda is right at the boundary of Action-Adventure and ARPG, and some games fall on the RPG side (TLoZ, Zelda 2) and many on the action-adventure side. But many are right at that limit, using equipment and heart containers as progression.
Dark Souls is absolutely an ARPG. You have leveling mechanics, different builds with impactful player choice, and other forms of progression. Likewise for Witcher 3.
And yeah, what frustrates me a lot is that many people seem to mean “Diablo-like” when they say “ARPG,” which it is, but the genre is much larger than that.
Diablo’s effect on the market was significant, inspiring many imitators. Its impact was such that the term “action RPG” has come to be more commonly used for Diablo-style games, with The Legend of Zelda itself slowly recategorized as an action-adventure.
To me, ARPG means any game with strong RPG mechanics and a focus on the action instead of stats for determining player success.
I guess I haven’t heard Souls-Like or games like Zelda or Witcher 3 (what I’d call Action Adventure I guess or RPG) called an ARPG although they fit the name well enough that maybe I have and today I’m falling on the other side of a fuzzy line.
Yes, I was referring to Diablo, PoE, Last Epoch, and the rest of the “looter” ARPG’s or what I’d just call ARPG’s. Maybe this is why the Diablo-like meme came up? To further drill in to the genre.
I think Zelda is right at the boundary of Action-Adventure and ARPG, and some games fall on the RPG side (TLoZ, Zelda 2) and many on the action-adventure side. But many are right at that limit, using equipment and heart containers as progression.
Dark Souls is absolutely an ARPG. You have leveling mechanics, different builds with impactful player choice, and other forms of progression. Likewise for Witcher 3.
And yeah, what frustrates me a lot is that many people seem to mean “Diablo-like” when they say “ARPG,” which it is, but the genre is much larger than that.
Here’s an interesting part from the ARPG Wikipedia article:
To me, ARPG means any game with strong RPG mechanics and a focus on the action instead of stats for determining player success.