[quote name='j-cart']I'm going to say it, ME is an RPG?[/QUOTE]
[quote name='ihadFG']I'd say ME3 ranks somewhere between ME1 and ME2 on the "Is it an RPG?" scale.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
I don't really get hung up on genre label debates. To me an RPGs is pretty much any story based game, where you're in the role of the main character and exploring the world and doing quests.
To get more specific you get into the sub-genres like JRPG or WRPG, and more specific things like strategy RPG, action RPG, action/adventure etc. that are still murky and really just useless for anything other than giving hardcore gamer nerds shit to argue about online.
I prefer the ME style RPGs (whatever subgenre you want to call them) as I couldn't give a
about spending time tweaking character appearance, allocating level up points across a bunch of categories, managing inventory and loot etc.
I just like advancing the story, exploring the world/universe and doing quests. All the leveling, inventory etc. in a lot of RPGs is just time wasted apart from all that stuff. So in something like Dragon Age or Bethesda RPGs I generally just turn the difficulty down so I don't have to waste as much time trying to optimize my character and can just wander around and explore and do quests.