Expressing yourself takes an amazing game. Not a good one. Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is a great role-playing game. I heard great things about its world and all of them are true. In its core it's an ideal world for role-playing, for my first play-through was a bouquet of expression. I definitely felt I could show my own self in my character while not being judged and whatever I made was fitting in the universes immense lore. It's hard not to role-play when the game's world has such depth in different styles.
Its cars, although not very polished in gameplay, follow different schools of design, their choice by the player is to express his aspirations. Choice of clothes is the same.
    Game's many factions don't just express the ways of thinking about the world. They are different in ethnicities, ancestry and occupation. While doing missions for them or against them, you will be forced to know, with whom do you sympathize.
It's not like in the modern fallout where It's either a choice between tyranny or the whiny government. Here you will fight every one of them because along with the player, every member of these factions are terrible homicidal people. But this expression is a matter of your personal feeling not gameplay mechanics, and I think It's why my first experience spoke to me on a personal level.

This is an actual in-game screenshot.

To visualize this let me analyze my style choices thru-out the game. What I picked was what I liked at the time. Back then I would think this was messy. But few years after I understood that my choices were the fullest expression of myself.

Actual Freedom of choice. My leanage speaks only about me.

In this Cyberpunk excelled. By making so every single style choice and lineage in the game doesn't matter for the amount of content you get, they allowed the player to express himself. This was untouched by the choices that had actually impact on the narrative.
In the game you can choose one of three backstories, and they give you different dialogue options and so, your characters automatic knowledge of some topics. Like a character with a corp backstory will know about the corporations inter-workings. But your character's knowledge doesn't mean he has automatic leanage towards something. That what kind of a corporation employee your character will be in the wind, so in this big frame of a backstory player can insert his own characteristics.
My character could have used the tyrannical frames of a corporation to express her need for a higher "law-abiding" personal freedom. This stubborn character of mine was then numerously challenged by the story choices in this game's immense well written campaign.
Let's now analyze this characters style choices to visually know my personal inner workings inserted into role-playing as an ex-corporation employee.

Clothes: I slowly went into an expensive suit but Cowboy style.

This expressed how I was really focused on making money, but still claimed to follow my personal freedom. From this style I was leaning into a cop-like signifying my lineage towards law enforcement. And like them, I was expressing moral symbolism while still being as despicable as the thugs I was judging.
At the time I was thinking that I was the only one with the moral choice of who lives and who dies. I would gain lots of money just to spent it on some beggar to enforce how more moral I was than this world. In this I was showy and leaned into an exaggerated symbolism.
This hypocrisy was in accordance with the game's message and was even expressed later in my variant of the ending in a very natural conclusion. I got the worst one, which I won't spoil.

Vehicles: In this I was also leaning towards showy and powerful, conservative choice. Muscle Cars.

Aren't muscle cars a perfect example of exaggerated expression of personal freedom. They are dangerous and bulky and still loved for the exact reasons. They are showy but my own was gray. It was a show of freedom while claiming restraint, which, at least back then, could have been my second name.

I remember I couldn't get enough of this car.

Faction: Seeing my choices it isn't a surprise I leaned towards the faction of 5-th Street.

They were as terrible as any other faction, but they were veterans, and claimed moral superiority in fighting towards a better America. They weren't really doing that and were just criminals. But that didn't stop me from having some sympathy towards them and trying not to kill them in missions.

Look at this cheesy cowboy-cop.

Weapons: Conservatism and moral superiority were the deciding factors in all of my choices. Expression of that is definitely a Japanese katana, and a shotgun.

My weapons of choice were as not modern as its possible. This could be odd in a game about a future setting, but the game and lore allows that approach.
They were as loud, as simple. Allowed me to carefully choose my targets to focus my judgment and kill them as loudly as possible. And it wasn't a conscious choice. Every one of them was picked from a pile of other choices, and every one of them was viable. This game really has like three main technologies and approaches to weapons, which in themselves have their own classes to express your play style.
So, you could express yourself in gameplay, by choosing a loud approach or a quiet one. But your choice of technology doesn't force any of them. You can put a suppressor on a mechanical shotgun as well as on a highly technological smart SMG. In short, personal expression is entirely separate to a gameplay choice.

This definitely worked for Cyberpunk. Because its gameplay choices, not in story, but in boots on the ground gameplay are disappointing. By being separate from personal expression It's still allowed to be a good game. Without gameplay reinforcing players choices its really up to the player to experience role-playing. Most of the players will do that automatically, as an effect of the interesting world that is difficult not to be sucked in. This made so, many people will consider it a good RPG, only if they got sucked in, but the 10% of us that wanted gameplay that actually forces expression will be left disappointed.
This is it. Cyberpunk allows you to express yourself well, but its gameplay mechanics are too broad and indeph in wrong places to feel like a proper role-playing action. Take for an example the original Deus EX which gameplay in itself was designed with meaningful choices in mind. There you will be noticed walking into the women's bathroom and this choice will be expressed in dialogue. But in cyberpunks gameplay the choices are so bare-bones and unnecessary, in contrast to dialogue choices that actually make a great difference, that if you play like the game allows you to play. You will dismember thousands of enemies just to have a pacifistic character in a cutscene.

I like role-playing, but not role-playing games.

This genre is in itself broad, and many games let you role-play but aren't considered to be role-playing games. The second one is called in short an RPG. Its origins are the table-top RPGs which, from what I understand have lots of choices, because their mechanics are heavy in concepts. It's not my thing, and cyberpunks gameplay definitely tried to imitate that tabletop RPG gameplay. I wouldn't say if it did it well. It definitely means that while learning cyberpunks progression you will be reading a lot of text and seeing arbitrary number values. For me this is not immersive, but I know some people like it.
We need to separate actual role-playing in video games from the conservative table-top notions which although have place in the modern games, are definitely for niche liking of some people and I don't think they fit into larger use in games. Can't be just inserted into any game because of its tight rules. Like nothing will be an Italian Western anymore except if something is Italian Western Style. Maybe we should start calling Cyberpunk a Tabletop-like RPG not just an RPG I wouldn't have to compare its mechanics to these in a game with more at the moment gameplay like Deus EX.