Is Dark Souls a JRPG?

[Laddy]

Final Fantasy Tactics and Planescape: Torment aren't even remotely alike. This is about as bizarre of a comparison you can make. Torment is real time, dialogue-focused, nonlinear, handling metaphysical/philosophical dilemmas over battles as the main conflicts, dying is a gameplay device rather than a fail state, and all combat is optional. The only similarities is that both games involve sad dudes who can change their class. I mean, do you even know the premise of the two games? Your insistence of difference and similarities on mechanics are very very superfluous, to be honest.

I wouldn't consider FFT a JRPG per se; I'd consider it a strategy RPG because that's what it is, and that's how it's more accurately described as. Like Banner Saga, Fire Emblem, Heroes of Might & Magic, XCOM, or Disgaea (3 of each coming from each region, btw). Dark Souls is more accurately described as an WRPG over a JRPG, but it's probably more in line with games like Torchlight or Kingdom Hearts, mechanically, making it an ARPG. It's quite different from what the traditional use of JRPG conveys, games like Tales of Vesperia, Xenosaga, or Golden Sun.

Can Ramza use his Persuasion stat to convince Argath to abandon his classism? Can he sneak into various battlegrounds to avoid combat if you choose to stat him that way? Can Ramza decide, smurf it, I'm going to just stick with being a mercenary and smurf saving the world? No, because that's not the developers' intent, they wanted to deliver a finely-tuned narrative that better suits their vision, so your comparison of its narrative structure outside of its influence from European history (which can be applied to any genre) to CRPG's is very inaccurate and one-dimensional. I question your experience with games like Torment or The Witcher since you seem to have a very limited scope of what they entail.

Witcher 3 has moral choice, extensive use of non combat skills, flexibility in character advancement, and narrative/quest open-endedness to an extent that Final Fantasy XV doesn't. The goal in FFXV is to watch Noctis' story, the goal of The Witcher 3 is to tell Geralt's story. I'd argue FFVII or the Persona series is quite a bit more like Witcher 3 since it's more open-ended in character advancement (materia, etc), you can choose to act upon various plot elements in the story how'd you wish, and there's just as much emphasis on sidequests.