I would say for it to be a cRPG, it should first and foremost have a strong focus on character development.
Nonsense
Without character development it isn't an RPG. It is an adventure or action game, etc... Character development is the defining element of an RPG. From the days of its RPG games inception, character development was the key (ie Chainmail was a board game, to which they applied character development within a story to facilitate strategic encounters which resulted in D&D). Story focused RPG's were a later adaptation, though even so they function on a certain level of character development. With cGames, the genres were defined in the realms of action, adventure, strategy, and RPG. Hybrids obvisly existed, but a game without character development is one of the other categories.
I hope you are not one of those who subjectively and irrationally terms an RPG as "I play a role, its a game... so its a role playing game". If that is the case, well... all games are RPGs. /boggle