Rpg's are not defined by their combat.
Fallout 2? Great rpg game with turn-based combat, Baldur's Gate 2? Great rpg game with real time combat.
No, RPG's are not defined solely by combat, that is true. It is part of the equation, though, when combat is present in the game. Branching dialogs or storylines won't define an RPG alone either, nor does and open and interactive world.
Both of your examples (great games, yeah) have fully character based combat, and neither is an "action game" in that regard nor in the same sense as every mainstream RPG today is.
There are many various ways they can have real time combat while still having tihe rpg elements impacting combat and other elements.
There are, but most of the time that's reducing "features" to "elements", where the former is the way that makes it recognizably and characteristically what it intends to be (an RPG) and the latter is "something like that or thereabout".
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