This was also my experience. I played on PC. I think console players had a bad time though.

Same. My first playthrough had like two bugs. One, a random encounter AI just didn't work for some reason, and another launched me straight up in the air as I was driving down the street.

Yeah, it definitely had some bugs, even on PC, but it wasn't like a bethesda game or anything. It was playable, but it is so much better now.

Wasn't much of the criticism also aimed at how misleading the trailers and advertising were? They promised insane stuff like every NPC having a realistic full day cycle and then people showed videos of them just riding the subway back and forth forever lol

Same. I played it for the first time like a month after release and I loved it. For me it always had good bones and the issues were surface level.

Obviously all the criticism was correct and valid, but there were certain angle or way of playing it or event certain luck to be had that made some people really appreciate it since the very beginning and I'm lucky I was one of those. I wasn't really too involved in the pre release hype and maybe that was the important factor to my experience, and in my opinion definitely that was the worse that cdpr did to damage the game.

I have finished it three times and currently on my fourth run and yes it has changed and improved a lot but I have loved every single time on its own.