Idk if you saw me post this old ass video in c/videos about the direct line between tabletop games and Dragon Quest but its really interesting

But yeah that stuff about SRPGs is interesting. Generally I say no, even a lot of later Fire Emblem plots follow JRPG tropes and such. And even if FFT exists. I think I agree that there are pure SRPGs and one that hybrid in some JRPG elements and tropes though.

The reason I talk about "does Tales of count" was when Projared (verbotten I know, but I still watch him, and this was before anyway) made a "top 10 JRPGs not by Squarenix" videos and one of his "rules" was "no action RPGs" and he showed Tales of Symphonia footage. I was kind of blown away at the time because I absolutely thought of ToS as a JRPG because it has most of the tropes and mechanics, it just also has actionized combat.

Also Tales of goes back pretty far. And as far as I know always had actiony combat. Same with Star Ocean. Like SO2 was on PS1 and had actiony combat. But they're definitively JRPGs in my mind.

Oh god the old days of "is Zelda an RPG" I remember that too. I think I agree that it wasn't an RPG until BotW.