Has anyone played Divine Divinity?

[LennyLen]

Compared to a game where you have absolutely no direction of the progression of your character, Diablo is an RPG.

So because it resembles an RPG more than a game that has no RPG elements, it IS an RPG?

That argument is rediculous. Following that line of reasoning, compared to Pong, Diablo could be considered a RTS (after all it requires strategy to play). Compared to Tetris, it's FPS game, since you can actually shoot things in Diablo, unlike in Tetris.

Using the same line of thinking, Raiden and other shoot-em-ups like that could be considered RPGs. After all you get to choose which powerups you use to boost your "character".

Edit:

Since I choose to not be incredibly specific to technicalities, I'll continue to term many games, including some inthe genres that you mentioned, RPG's.

Well, in the Real World, what genre a game is classified as is based on what the majority of the game elements are. Diablo has much more Hack n Slash elements, which is why it is considerd an Adventure game. Games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights are considerd RPG games, even though they're not compared to Pen 'n' Paper systems, because that is what the majority of the game elements are. Simple really, isn't it?