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2007 has been quite a year for RPGamers. The quality titles just kept flying at us one after another as we desperately tried to keep up, but in the end I expect most of us are stuck with a pretty hefty backlog to play through. However, amidst the vast sea of gaming goodness this year has wrought, a rather unusual trend has emerged: the RPG cross-over. In fact, this year virtually every other gaming genre out there has been combined with an RPG, either released or in production.
Action-Adventure
This genre is pretty straightforward, as RPGs have been merged with it for years. This year games like Rogue Galaxy, Odin Sphere, and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass filled this spot, but there are already several companies and series dedicated to this common cross-over, such as Tri-Ace and the Tales series.
  
Shooters
The shooter genre is about as far away from RPGs as you can get, but shares something in common with RPGs by having an enormous dedicated fanbase. However, despite their dissimilarities, this year saw not just one, but two high-profile shooter/RPG cross-overs: Mass Effect and Hellgate: London.
 
Platformer
Though platforming/RPG cross-overs have been done before, such as Valkyrie Profile or Wild ARMs 4, no game has taken it to quite the same level as this year's Super Paper Mario, which is essentially a traditional Mario Bros. platformer with the levels, items, and story of a Paper Mario game.
Real-Time Strategy
While the first game to truly break ground on an RTS/RPG hybrid was Warcraft III, nobody really considered it an RPG. However, this year has seen two games that crossed that bridge and were covered by RPGamer.com: GrimGrimoire and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.
 
Simulation
While the above combinations were unique and interesting, they weren't completely unthinkable, but now we get into the truly bizarre. This year saw two Simulation/RPG cross-overs. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 combined RPGs with a high-school social simulator, while Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon combined RPGs with a farm simulation. Although the Harvest Moon series is considered by most to be an RPG, Rune Factory took it to a new level by including levels and combat.
 
Puzzle
Even odder than simulation, puzzle games are so simplistic and uninvolved that the very thought of combining it with an RPG is simply absurd. And yet, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords managed to do just that. Not only that, but it was done surprisingly well, lauded by critics everywhere and quickly expanding from its initial two portable consoles to the Wii, mobile phones, the PS2, and even to Xbox Live Arcade.
Rhythm
What could be odder than puzzle games? How about rhythm, the irritatingly addictive and catchy genre defined by Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero? Square Enix's upcoming and recently renamed DS RPG The World Ends With You features a strange combination of action, rhythm, and role-playing. Already released in Japan, it has an early 2008 release window for North America.
Sports
And finally we reach the oddest of the bunch: sports games. The annoying genre that somehow manages to outsell even the greatest of role-playing titles, despite each yearly addition featuring only a handful of generally unnoticeable, unneeded, or unwanted features that somehow make the crazy sports fans go out and buy them religiously. Well, acclaimed developer Level 5 has decided to do the unthinkable, and create a Soccer RPG: Inazuma Eleven.
It was hard to notice as the games were spread out and so disparate that nobody even really paid it any mind, but when they're all laid out in a line, the only major genre that's missing is racing, and it wouldn't surprise me if we somehow see an RPG cross-over of that type sometime in the near future.
If this serves any purpose, it's to show just how versatile our beloved genre really is. You really can do anything imaginable with an RPG. The basic mechanics can be adapted by virtually any genre in order to create a sense of progression and occasionally a check against egregious difficulty levels. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is something for each to decide on his own, but looking at the above list, of the games that have been released, there is not a single dud among them.
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