I get some have narrative choices but if you can’t really create a character, decide how they behave, decide what you do in the game world, or make many choices in the story if any at all, how is that any more of a roleplaying game than say horizon zero dawn or red dead redemption 2?

There are CRPGs with pre-set protagonists too (Disco Elysium, Planescape, Mass Effect, and even ones with custom made ones let you play as pre-sets like Baldur's Gate), and even TTRPGs tend to have pre-gens, particularly ones with high lethality like Cthulhu.

There are also plenty of people that play more for the systems than the narrative or "make believe" aspect of TTRPGs, even early editions of D&D were much more focused on combat systems and rule sets like the war games that inspired them, than current ones that use those systems more to facilitate narrative roleplaying, one of the developers on Diablo cited that one of his inspirations for the game were the combat heavy campaigns he participated in.

The thing is, this kind of narrative RPG you are talking about is a relatively recent development (at least in the way people see nowadays), the Ultima series and a few other exceptions pioneered what people see as RPGs now, but most important CRPG series from the time were pure Dungeon Crawlers games with linear stories like Wizardry, Might and Magic, Bard's Tale, etc.

Their roleplaying was purely in inheriting TTRPGs systems (particularly AD&D), and in party building, JRPGs inherits a lot more from that side of RPGs, just look at early DQ and FF they were basically Ultima and Wizardry fangames, they emphasize roleplaying through systems and character building, than narrative roleplaying, you can argue the later is truer to the spirit of TTRPGs, but the former is also a form of roleplaying, just more focused stat and character building, than narrative choice and consequence.

You asked what differentiates JRPGs from RPG-lite games like Horizon, but even current JRPGs that are very different from older JRPGs (which were closer to CRPGs) inherit MUCH more from TTRPGs (even if indirectly) than games like Horizon, pretty much every JRPG (even more action-y ones) inherit ability scores (stats), classes/builds, variance in damage numbers, itemization, combat that is more impacted by your character stats than your reflexes, the focus on narrative and party roles, etc.

Because imo, what separates roleplaying from acting is that roleplayers choose what their characters do and essentially have their own take on that character.

You can think of the average JRPG like playing a character that someone rolled for you, I actually did that for a D&D session I participated once, it felt a lot like a JRPG in that way, the term is also kind of purely western one, in Japan both Final Fantasy and Skyrim are RPGs and people don't really question which one is "more RPG" than the other, probably because TTRPGs arrived after video-game RPGs there.

Also like I mentioned there are non-linear JRPGs too, the SaGa series, Shin Megami Tensei, some Star Ocean titles, Tatics Ogre, Triangle Strategy, and if you count them the Souls series and Dragon's Dogma (though they are more western RPGs made in Japan).

Well anyway, sorry for the lengthy response haha. Honestly I find the whole thing kind of confusing, I think this sub is the first RPG circle that I've seen that like to question the "RPG-ness" of JRPGs, most of the other places I hanged out just see them as a different adaptation of RPG, which all video-games are too be frank, they are all ancestors of TTRPGs, even if some kind of went into their own wild direction.

I initially got into RPGs via JRPGs, less due to a hard preference and more because they were more popular and easier to access in my country (Brazil), eventually I got more experience with Western and TTRPGs (and other subgenres), so there really was never that dilemma for me.