Please don't remind me of Tobal...

I did read your post and that's why I answered like that as some of those games I listed had sequels released maybe a year before the original King's Field so I doubt they didn't influence it in some way. Dark Souls is just an extention of that and frankly if the best JRPG comparison was a lite-JRPG side quest from two fighting games made by an RPG company, I don't really feel that is the same as saying it's influenced by real JRPGs unless there was a series you mentioned I missed. Honestly the Souls franchise is kind of just it's own thing, but I find it hard to rank it with JRPGs which tend to focus more on character and story to the detriment of everything else. Of course, I'm in the minority in saying the series is more of an Action game with an RPG system attached to it, since I feel like the core combat mechanics and a player's skill using them is far more essential than your stats, but I know I'm the only one who feels that way.

As for DQ... well honestly I feel the franchise dips back and forth between games to be honest. DQVIII is definitely a JRPG but I would probably agree that DQ1 is not. I genuinely feel that Phantasy Star was the first true JRPG in terms of being the first game to have all the elements commonly associated with how we define the genre today. Then again, I feel most of the RPGs released back then, with a few exceptions from the rules, are simply defined as RPG, and the W and J part really doesn't come to play until the 90s; when the advent of the 16-bit console generation and advances in PC gaming made the genre distinctly split. Frankly the term RPG is such a catch all term and it's few core elements have been lifted by every other genre, it's hard to really say where to draw the line on what is and isn't a RPG. Still, it's all semantics and it's not like the world is going to come to an end if a game is listed as being part of one sub-genre over another. Gaming is like the music industry, who cares what genre it is, it only matters if you like it or not.