The above part is copy paste from a post I've made elsewhere dealing with RPGs. Now to your topic specifics:
As for my favorite RPG, I have to actually hand it off to Golden Sun: TLA. While I'd rather nominate the two-part game as a whole, I guess I have to be specific. I know a lot of people rate the game highly, but not many place it at the top. The reason that I like it is because of how incredibly simple it is while still having tons of depth. The story isn't complex at all, yet it still has enough twists and turns that you can't predict it from the onset. The characters are a little dull, but they fit where they need to at all times. The battle system works very well, to the point where you can watch two people play with very different styles, and still have them work. From actually utilizing Djinn to stall and power yourself up, to summon rushing, to just straight up Attack/Magic style. You can spend hours trying to find a good set of classes with all the variety involved. Yet at the same time, you never have to even touch the class system to play through the game. It's perfectly acceptable to give Earth adepts Earth djinn, and so on and so forth. It's simple, yet still easy to pick up and really get into.
And with a shockingly smaller explanation, I'll go ahead and add in that Demon's Souls is my second favorite. Again, a very simple game with stellar gameplay and plenty of replay value. Yet if you look deeper, the amount of depth in the story is really astounding. But whatever.
Favorite sub-genre, I'll say that I typically stay with J(L!)RPGs. I've fully enjoyed games of every genre, but I'm a sucker for interactive stories, and don't mind being pulled down a somewhat linear path to hear it. I have no qualms against anime styled characters, and often find drawn art better than what can be generated in 3D, though that is quickly changing looking at games like Witcher and Skyrim.
I explained in full above what an RPG is, and I do think it still applies. It shouldn't be used as a defining quality (olol you play a role so it's a role playing game guize), but seeing as how where it comes from still applies, yeah. I do wish we could get people to stop defining as J or W, just because people in the West are fully capable of making LRPGs, and the same the other way.
And for the last question, I don't think there's a need. I mean, you can simply look at a game and see if it's an SRPG. Maybe they should put some kind of tag on game like Fallout saying that the main focus is roaming around? It's fine as is, though maybe I say that only because I make sure to actually know what games are before I buy them.
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"I can already feel my Dumey Lust kicking in." -MistBiomeZ