Hey, so my project will probably skew more in a Heavy Rain/Silent Hill type vein than Myst or IDK Gabriel Knight or w/e. There will be some resource management and combat in a "survival horror"ish vein but the combat/"twitch" gameplay isn't really the point. (Sidenote: the Legend of Zelda games are action-adventure games, not action RPGs. If you look at the original top-down Zelda games they are strikingly lacking in RPG elements like stats and levels. But I get that they're not what you mean when you say "graphical adventure game" and that's fine obviously.)  I wanted to know if I'm going to be safe here or kind of riding the line.

Does it matter if I have puzzles or not? Is there a specific like, minimum, 'puzzle density' to aim for?

edit: Clock Tower is probably a good comparison. that is technically considered a graphical adventure game according to wikipedia

As you know, you're certainly at least riding the line. What I generally say is this: If you know for sure that you are 100% familiar with adventure games as a genre, have played lots of them, hang out on adventure game forums and discord servers, etc, possibly made some of them and are just really familiar with the genre, then it is possible to ride the line because you'll know when you've stepped outside the bounds. Otherwise, it's better to stay further inside the lines so as not to accidentally stray outside of them.