I don't think the biggest problems with this game were the bugs. They were the most spectacular, to be sure, but I think what is keeping this game from being exceptional are deep structural flaws. Is it possible to fix the game? Probably not. Is it possible to make improvements? I think so. Here are some improvements I would make, not all of these fesible:

1) Rip out the looter shooter. It doesn't work. Make guns all the same and have a smaller selection of guns that are meaningfully different in terms of handling and gimmicks. People who can suddenly take more bullets to the face because their level is higher is ridiculous. Especially in an RPG.
1a) Extreme caliber, low ROF weapons. Cannons. Where are they? A genre staple ever since Decker's hand cannon started an arms race in ridiculous guns.

2) Get rid of levels. Make equipment the deciding factor about how many shots a person can take.

3) Make inventories limited. The car boot is in the game techincally, but does it have a use? Make it so you have to carry ammo and items and not lug around 1000s of guns. Instead you have to consider your loadout before a "mission". High equipment loads mess with the economy. It's weird all of these guns are effectively worthless.
3a) Furthermore: make it so walking around downtown with an unconcealed assault rifle puts civilians and cops and gangs at alarm. It might be technically legal, but wave a kitchen knife around in your friends' faces and see how they react. It shouldn't make (most people hostile) but it should clue them off something is about to go down and react accordingly. Like by getting the hell out of there. You should, ideally, have to conceal that shotgun in a guitar case or something. And only get it out when you're ready to start something.

4) Can we talk about driving? Driving should be good enough that you could sell it as a $10-20 standalone game and you'd want to play it. Night City is not fun to drive in, nor is the driving itself fun. If I were to salvage it, I would make everything feel much better it ought to be. Driving cars in this game is a chore. Considering how many Cyberpunk shows/movies make use of cool cars and crusing down the highway as lights flicker by, crappy driving is a mortal sin.

5) In relation to point one, make clothes largely cosmestic. Make the styles easy to find and your appearance and style easy to customise. Maybe have a heavy armour clothing available that offers substantial protection. However, don't make me choose stats over style. It's a bad look in an RPG. And while we're here, maybe more styles of clothes. What happened to suits in the next 50 years? Taco Bell won the fast food wars? Because there is like one style of suit jacket it feels like. There should be an abundence of long coats of various cuts.

6) The crafting system doesn't work. Resource scarcity basically means players avoid engaging with the system. It should be based completely on money. Or, if you don't have the components, it will let you autobuy the missing ones. This would let players scavenge for good parts, but wouldn't stop players from really investing in things. Then again, if you did step one, then there probably isn't the need for a crafting system as it currently exists.

7) The music. This is subjective, but it's awful. I listen to the pop station? Rap. I listen to the rock station? Rap. If I wanted to hear rap music, I'd listen to the rap statio--OH WAIT THEY'RE ALL RAP MUSIC. But the soundtrack is just awful in general. It's like it was inspired by Blade Runner 2049. Music works better when you include ... melodies? I don't know how you can fix this per se. Custom radio stations would be nice. I think if one were to consider the "cyberpunk fantasy" then you'd hear more glam rock, new wave, hair metal pieces, but ...

8) Combat should be tuned for a more tactical, highly lethal style, if we consider the source material. Life is cheap and short and it seldom feels like that.

9) Make cybernetics good? I mean, right now they're mostly mild stat boosts. The eye upgrades should give you the ability to see termal imaging-- or enemies through walls, tag enemies for remote targeting and otherwise give you access to features you didn't have before. Not giving minor buffs. The high jump legs are great.

10) What is street cred? As a limiter on shops it's annoying. As a limiter on what missions are available, I can dig it.

That's just off the top of my head. I said this in my review, but I really think Syndicate 2012 does the genre more justice than this game. Cyberpunk 2077 feels more post-apocalyptic than it does Cyberpunk. Not surprising, consiidering how Night City feels like a barren wasteland, derth of content. It's not enough that "Night City", in the setting is a name stolen from the opening pages of Neuromancer and made into the most bland and generic setting for Cyberpunk. In reality this game should have been set in Mombasa or Singapore, but that was unavoidable, I suppose.

Structurally and mechanically, yes it is. Structurally and mechanically, no it isn't. Again, no it's not. (sigh).....

1) By that logic, all first person RPGs with guns are looter shooters.

2) Yes it is. It's literally an RPG in every way except for the fact that your character has a pre-existing name and a little bit of backstory.

3) Again, yes, it is. You literally can't deny that. Whether it's YOUR type of RPG or not is irrelevant, the fact is that this is an RPG and that cannot be disputed.

And this is the issue in a nutshell... at this point ANYTHING with numbers gets called an RPG, from Assasin's Creed to League of Legends... but for the purposes of this post I will define an example of RPG as being that of W3 (after all we were told to expect that Level of game interaction)..... and this game has NONE of that depth or interaction.

So not an rpg in those terms, and if you simply judge it on gameplay where EVERYTHING serves the combat and there are no talents or abilities that don't stray from only affecting combat, or existing because of combat... then that makes it the same as a looter shooter.. and the story doesn't even matter either because it's shallow and non-reactive full of false or resultless 'choices'.. so again LOOTER SHOOTER.

... CDPR have LITTERLY given us the multiplayer component of the game filled with bots and hastily covered with a shoehorned story that didn't exist til last year.

FOR A THIRD OF A BILLION DOLLARS.... a. third. of. a. BILLION. dollars (what the everloving fudge), EIGHT YEARS AND OVER 1000 EMPLOYEES.... THIS IS THE BEST THEY CAN DO?

LMAO (but crying inside)

I would agree with you but the thing is that CP2077 has literally EVERY element of a cRPG minus the ability to set your name and come up with a custom backstory. It is, indeed, an RPG. Like I said, you can't deny that. Like I said, using your logic, ANY game that has any sort of loot in it as well as guns is automatically a looter shooter. That means that modern Fallout, The Outer Worlds, even Deus Ex would be looter shooters as well. As for the story, I don't know where you're getting that ridiculousness. They've been working with R. Talsorian and Pondsmith for years, since the early days of the game. That much is clear.

We get it, you didn't like the game. That doesn't mean you get to redefine the game's genre classification or make up some goofy statement about the game being just a multiplayer game with bots. Again, going back to the "using your logic" argument, any game with NPCs and gameplay that could translate into a multiplayer setting would dwell within your definition of a "multiplayer component with bots".

Also, I'll add this much: if you think The Witcher 3 was an RPG but this is not, then you're clearly biased. The Witcher 3 actually had fewer RPG elements than CP2077.

I'm redefining nothing. If anyone is redefing definitions it CDPR.. If it was an RPG I would have no reason to complain would I?..I didn't complain about the Witcher and had the GAMEPLAY been anywhere near that game I'd be playing it, because I wouldn't need to complain.

I don't dislike the game because of content or story.. I dislike the game because there's nothing to do except shoot someone in the face and the cut, truncated, dumbed down unreactive story isn't even a draw either... pretty much the definition of looter shooter... and not even the best one out there, it's a subpar looter.

A THIRD OF A BILLION DOLLARS, EIGHT YEARS, 1000 EMPLOYEES...

No, in those terms of resources.. this game is a POS.

Except that you are. CDPR developed a game that fits perfectly within the classifications of the RPG genre, yet you're sitting here telling me it's a looter shooter. As I said, The Witcher 3 was far less of an RPG than this, so if you're gonna tell me that W3 is an RPG but CP2077 isn't, then you're really stretching your attempt to redefine the genre classifications.

There is plenty to do. Over 60 hours of gameplay and I still find intriguing places to explore, fun things to do outside of the main story. This is an action RPG so yeah, there's gonna be plenty of combat, as that is a major part of the core gameplay loop. The story isn't dumbed down at all (you have to be joking) and I definitely do not believe that it isn't reactive. It doesn't need to have a million branching pathways in the story to be a reactive RPG. And no, that is not the definition of a looter shooter; that kind of a statement makes me wonder if you've even played one before.

It may be crap in your opinion, and that's fine. Just quit trying to redefine what the game is to suit your opinions. That'd be like me saying that Dark Souls (a franchise that I don't understand the love for) is an arcade fighting game because it has action combat and involves timing to succeed. I wouldn't do that. I may not like that series and may not necessarily agree with its classification as an RPG, but that doesn't mean I get to redefine what its genre(s) actually is.

The simple fact of the issue is that if this was an rpg I wouldn't be complaining because I'd be playing it... it doesn't matter how you think the game is or what lengths you are willing to go to to excuse the game and CDPR, if this was the game WE WERE TOLD TO EXPECT I wouldn't be complaining.

My expectation are governed SOLELY CDPR's publicity releases of what they said we were getting.. not by some opinion I have in my head.... and we didn't get that game, or anything anywhere close to it

... and remember it's not just me who knows this isn't an rpg.. I'm hardly the first person to say this.

...... but I'll tell you what, my arguement of it's lack of worth IS SO STRONG, that I'll give you the benefit... EVEN IF THIS WAS AN RPG...... for the resources used on this game, for the result to turn out as it has, the game is categorical INDISPUTABLE garbage, regardless of how you wish to classify that garbage.

A THIRD OF A BILLION DOLLAR.. FOR THIS?... I DARE you to tell me it's worth it.

It's an RPG. It's literally not up for debate. It may not be your preferred type of RPG and that's cool, but you can't just say it's not an RPG just because you don't enjoy it. Additionally, this was the game we should have expected. If you expected differently, that's on you because the marketing clearly showed us what we ended up getting. You, and every other person that refuses to acknowledge the FACT that this is an RPG are just showing blatant ignorance, at best.

Again, it's "garbage" in your opinion. You don't like it, that's fine, but quit acting like a tool. It's ridiculous that you're arguing with me over the game's classification and trying to pass off your opinions as fact just because you didn't enjoy the game. Be an adult, voice your criticism in a fair and respectable manner, then move on. Simple as that.

I'm done wasting my time on this argument. I said what I needed to say. Disagree if you want.

What's the point of this? Not even CDPR calls it an RPG. Surrogate interaction is requisite for the categorization. Otherwise you're just playing an action game with gamified progression. The developers worked on The Witcher (2007) and then gave up on the mechanical aesthetics of the RPG and just kept the denomination to leverage its pedigree. Just marketing, it's pretty simple.

You're correct that they don't always call it an RPG, often opting for "action adventure", but I'm fairly certain they have called it an RPG as well. That being said, it IS most definitely an RPG. It literally fills every single definition of an RPG, minus the ability to choose your name and the fact that V has a little bit of a pre-existing backstory.

You're in direct control of your character, Jakob. Even the hacking is handled through a mini game that the player, not the character, must complete. Even though your base statistics and skills have an impact, it's the player's ability, and not the character's, that's determinant to success. There's no surrogacy, the game's first person in more than just perspective. You could call it an action RPG, but that's just an action game with gamified progression. Meaningless marketing speak.

Everything in CP2076 is overpowered

CDPR does not believe it needs fixing - they are proud of the PC version. So if you are playing the PC version, you have received the product as it was intended to be delivered. Bugs will be fixed.