[TheGame]

You could call the main character link, yet the games clearly take place in different worlds, and the ones that take place in the same world feature different people as the main character. And he doesn't even have a personality, and you pick his name from the gate.. thus why you're role playing him.

Most RPGs can be beaten without heavily doing side quests, its just a lot harder if you don't do it. Likewise, most RPGs don't enforce the story on you hard, you can just chill out a lot and make money or get a lot of unnessicary perks...

I can see why people would not like to call it an RPG since it doesn't follow the same exact formula of every other RPG... But there is tons of RPG elements in it. Zelda is as much an RPG as Mario tennis is a sports simulation game.