To be fair, given how flexible the term RPG gets tossed around it's hard to draw meaningful comparisons based solely on the label itself. Most game genre's have evolved to this point, really. Come to think of it, I run into issues here all the time when browsing around for new games.
I don't think the point was comparing RPG's to RPG's is asinine. The point was restricting the comparisons to other games labelled as RPG's is asinine.
I'm not going to take this into a what is or isn't an RPG. For the purpose of this discussion anything that's officially labeled as an RPG is an RPG. That even extends the list considerably, and i've yet to see anyone offer an example of such a game with a combat system that's better, in any way, to what we've seen. I'm not saying they're not, maybe i'm not aware of them.
Comparing this to RDR2 makes no sense whatsoever. Think about what would happen if you have a street brawl with someone higher level than you.. You flying kick him, now, in RDR2 he would probalby tumble over, blood sparying from his nose.. something.. except in this case your flying kick only took 1% of his total HP pool. So, to beat him you'd have to tumble him around for half an hour.. The opposite: fighting someone lower level with the opposite happening one punch he's out cold. Combat done. There's an abstraction of reality there that need to be considered and accounted for.
That's just one simple example and something that would never occur in games like RDR 2 because there's no levels, no stats to tweak, no RPG mechanics. It works differently and they give it that gritty, realistic feeling to it because the game lends itself well to it. Not the case here. The moment melee becomes a viable option in an RPG it will be subjected to the same mechanics as the rest of the game, for better or worse. Different design philosophies, different focuses.
Wanting it to look the same but behave differently is what i'd define as asinine.