The language of a gamer vs the language of a developer
When you start materializing one of your precious game ideas, you might be trying to describe it more like a gamer than a game developer. It's not inherently bad (you will still use this language for marketing), but not necessarily helpful for development.
Consider this a matter of mindset!
You're not doing?
a classic Zelda
a 2D RTS
a Harvest Moon clone (or J-Farming, as I call it)
a Vampire survivor clone
a classic J-RPG clone
You're making a game with a top-down perspective.
You're not making a...
2D platformer
Metroidvania
You're just making a 2D side scroller.
It's much easier in 3D with all those first-person and third-person perspectives it's like technical babble is closer to game-type names.
Of course, all those genres are different, I hear you object!
And you're right, but all those differences are implementation details.
At the same time, the similarities create a sort of MVP / common denominator for all those games, that will help you implement it faster.
If the entire game is a pizza, then today's focus is the base, while the implementation details are the other ingredients (and the pineapple is mandatory!)
I'm so glad you raise this distinction. "Side scroller", "top down", "3rd person" - these are the canvas of the game and will be the most crucial in determining controls, art, and baseline mechanics. From there, you can refine the game until it starts more closely resembling a genre.
Describing your game like another game is making the assumption that the other person has played that game.
"You know in my bedroom I have that picture?"
I can hear u thinking, "No! I don't know the picture because I've never been in your beroom."
That's what I'm thinking everytime some describes a game as Rogue-like or Zelda-esque or whatever. I've seen top-down, side-scrollers, & platformers, but I've never played that game for 1 of 1,000 reasons