Xbox/ 360 RPG's

[Jin]

There's angst done well, and then angst done very badly. You can't tell me that every angsty-related storyline in a game has been interesting. Some of it gets old, really fast.

And who is using angsty as a pejorative?

To answer both of you at the same time: what I said was more in response to other posts that weren't even in this thread; you both just made me think about it. There's a trend these days that any story even remotely angsty or, god forbid, "emo" (I hate this term in general), is dismissed as being childish and whiney for no particular reason. This usually goes hand and hand with the Xbox Live (and PSN) homophobic crowd that has some retarded sense of what's manly and anything that's a deviation is ridiculed as being "gay" or "emo" (or both). It pisses me off as I think angst is necessary in a story for it to be good. And you're right, Tiff, there are good angsts and bad angsts, but the problem I have is that it doesn't matter what kind of angst is being expressed, this crowd will attack it regardless.
/rant

Yet I still disagree with you. Mostly because you seem kind of angry.

That's a silly reason to disagree with someone. Though I'm not angry, that's just how I type.

Valkyria Chronicle is not a shooter by this logic as you have no direct control over the actual shooting. You just go wherever you want, target, and command the character to attack whereupon you're displayed an animation of the character shooting for you.

But you do have control over the shooting. You're still aiming and pressing the fire button when you attack. Your ability to hit is still designated by a ring of possible hit locations, the same as it is in Mass Effect. The only difference is that the animation happens after the fact in Valkyria Chronicles. The same background statistics are going on in mass effect. Your attack compared to their defense, the damage you do in relation to their health, it's all happening the same way. It's just happening in real time. I will happily concede that Mass Effect incorporates some elements from shooters, but it's first and foremost an RPG all the same.

Genres are just evil markting tools anyway.

That's why I like them.

Although the difference between ACTION RPGs *cough* ( ) and regular RPGs?

Action.

Action RPGs take place in real time and require you to actually use attacks the way you would in action games instead of simply selecting them from a menu. Fable, for example, is an action RPG while Final Fantasy games are not.