Viata
Well, here is my take on that: A CRPG is an electronic game that tries, in some way, to emulate pen and paper RPGs. It is not a real genre just like "games with over 50 hours of gameplay" aren't a genre. Electronic games (and most games for that matter) derive their genre (that is, their division in separate groups of similar things) from their gameplay. Platformers are a genre because platformers all have a similar type of gameplay, where you time and aim jumps, use different abilities and vertical movement to beat enemies and go through long stages (often with exploratory elements). 3d platformers are actually a different genre because the kind of activity you do in them, the skill you need to win it, is different. They focus much less on precision (even because it is hard to give precision to the player with a movable camera) and much more in exploration.
An electronic game, at least a single player one, however, can never be a true RPG. As such, it is limited in somehow aping the P&P genre. Another example of this would be those Fighting Fantasy books (they were called "Livros-Jogos Aventuras Fantásticas" in Brazil), which in similar way can't be RPGs, but can somehow ape the genre to give the player an idea of what it is (Fighting Fantasy did this very well, I think). Now, CRPGs have done this in several ways, such as using attributes, stats and what not, using similar combat mechanics as P&P games, using similar character concepts such as levels, races, classes, etc, using similar settings, and so on. But none of those things really define a game as an RPG. Rather, it is just an issue of approximation, but especially, of the imaginative aspect of the game that the player interacts with. Which is why I said I consider Zork an RPG game. Zork is thorougly an adventure game, where you need to explore areas and solve their puzzles in order to progress. And yet, it is very similar to older dungeon crawlers, in that you have strange puzzles and traps trying to stop you from taking the most treasure you can carry. In fact, I would say that the gameplay specific to adventures, that is puzzles that are based on the story and exploration of the gameworld rather than simply being logical or mathematical puzzles, is more compatible with actual RPG gameplay than the basic tactical gameplay* people usually associate with the genre (of course, you can always use both and the best CRPGs certainly did). Most adventure games aren't CRPGs because the game aren't trying to copy pen and paper games in any way, and they also frequently add in a heavy storytelling element that separates the player from their character, stopping any attempt to really "role-play". But Zork doesn't, while there is no character building, there isn't an effort from the game of fitting your character into a separate story with no control from you. Other text adventures like Deadline frequently did this as well. These games weren't called RPGs, but my point is that they could.
Anyway, my point is not to argue empty semantics. Rather, I consider important these affirmations:
- There is no specific gamplay elements linking CRPGs with pen and paper RPGs or with other CRPGs (that is, there is not an specific part of the gameplay that must be present for the game to be called a CRPG by its developers).
- The imaginary aspect of a computer game is important in making it feel like a P&P RPG, and if that is what you care about, combat in itself is not paramount.
Finally, I haven't actually played DE. But from what I read, the "game" isn't a game at all, it is more like one of those visual novels or whatnot.
*I say this for two reasons. First because the puzzles are somewhat similar to the creative problem solving players will frequently encounter in real RPGs (although even that isn't a defining feature either). Much like a character in D&D might kill a difficult foe by luring it in a room full of acid pools and throwing it in one, or use the old illusory bridge to lure the troll into an abyss, or try to grab a scorpion-man's tail to make it poison itself, a character in an adventure game will usually need to come up with creative solutions to the problems presented, although in this case the solutions are usually pre-defined, rather than creative. Second because in tactical games, the player is not supposed to really use anything besides the pre-made and clearly (hopefully) defined options given to him. It is easy for CRPGs that focus on this to simply boil down to an optimisation game. In fact, some pen&paper games focus so much on this that people are expected to always play within the rules, which actually makes a game less of an RPG.
Edit:
Please, minigame has nothing to do with rpg, since it's the player's skill that is being tested, not the character's.
Every RPG has things that test the player skill. If it didn't, it would be a simulation, not a game. Whether it is your skill making the character, or your strategical skill or whatnot, the idea that eliminating player skill is important to an RPG doesn't hold water if taken as a whole.
Mini-games aren't very good, however, because they try to represent something by doing something completely different. Speech mini-games are particularly annoying because they have nothing to do with actually convincing the NPC of anything at all. A good example of doing this kind of stuff without mini-games is, however, the old Neuromancer game. In there, you would be able to hack different places and even deal with different NPCs by finding information and gathering clues from the various places you already had access. If hacking had been an abstract mini-game instead, the game would have suffered greatly for it.