Maybe but it's hardly the first game to do it or even the best game for the active gameplay mechanics. I'll always say the main draw of those games is the creative worlds and characters. The gameplay is merely supplementary no matter how good it is.
True, Mario RPG had the Action Commands too and that came out in 1996. Speaking of which, Paper Mario was gonna be a sequel (more or less) to Mario RPG but Nintendo failed to get the rights to the name from Square.
