Hey gang,

So, I'm still slugging my way through RDR2. I'm just up to chapter 4 in Saint Denis, and I just saved Jack.

For the most part, I'm really enjoying the game. Existing in the world is cool, and on a PS4 Pro, the game looks unbelievable. I've never seen a game look so good since HZD, another Sony game.

I love the gunplay, I like the brilliant characters, especially Dutch, Charles and Javier- the clear stand outs in the camp. I've really enjoyed the stranger missions for the most part, with special mention going out to the feller who you help take photos, and the cross dressing animal fighter.

However, there are certain parts of the game that stink. Having to go through the animation EVERY time for fucking EVERYTHING is an absolute fun killer. I get that I'd have to rifle through someone's pockets to find a gold watch or something, but do they REALLY need to add that as a part of the core gameplay? 99% of the time I don't even bother looting, as it seems pointless. You get PLENTY of money from just doing missions, that I dont know why they even added the option to loot people. But it's not just looting animations, it's the whole breadth of them. How slow Arthur opens drawers, searches cupboards, eats food. Everything just takes an eternity.

In addition, there's so many systems that just feel...worthless. I haven't used a DE/Health/Stam tonic outside of maybe the tutorials? You just dont need them if you play smart- which is guns blazing, auto targetting and flicking the stick up a CM or so to headshot people. Fishing and Hunting, while cool to have in the game are also beyond saving. I get that you can get little perks, but they're all so meaningless that it's not worth doing. 10% less durability drop on your weapons? Who gives a shit. I've had to clean my guns twice in the entire game so far. It doesn't help that hunting in general, especially the legendary animals is so obscure in how you should be doing it, that it makes me not want to bother.

What about you guys? Does anything stand out particularly for the positive/negative?

It has done the best job out of any game of making me feel like a cowboy doing cowboy things, and I love it. Any warts are just completely ignored because I love strolling around at a relaxed pace just being a real cool dude in a fantastic environment. But I just have a huge affection for this concept, even back in the GUN days I would try and take it slow to eat up the atmosphere, and that game is not nearly as good as this.

I just haven't seen the issues that exist as any major problem. And some aspects I think actually are smaller sacrifices that were made to make the full picture more cohesive and lively.

But yeah, if you look at it through the lense of a normal open world game with defined activities and structure... It's quite bad. Running from checkpoint to checkpoint to try and "complete" the game is a very frustrating experience that feels unresponsive and not nearly as freeform as other games in the genre will allow. It honestly ends up being a weirdly niched game with an insane budget. This is what happens when one of the biggest studios make a game for themselves and don't compromise to give it wider appeal. I just think I happen to share the same wants that they were expressing with it.

Oh another pet peeve is the horses. The one thing that stands out most is when you're moseying, then you get near another persons horse, and you GRIND to a halt, going their speed, and the game thinks youre gonna jump to their horse.

Happens more than I like

The only thing I genuinely don't like is the lack of (real) fast travel. Like I get it they want immersion they want the slow methodical thing I understand all the reasoning. Most of the time I want that, I want all the small time wasting mood setting bullshit. I'll sit in one spot and rifle through 40 distinct sets of pockets.

But like when something turns out to be on the other end of the fuckin' map that's just actual raw time. Doing nothing.

I don't have enough of that to want to hear about immersion.

A few things I disliked:

1. The mission structure (especially in Ch. 5 and 6) consists of ride to location, kill 50 guys, ride away. The design is simply terrible and its literally EVERY mission in these chapters. The writing and voice acting is still great, but it became a massive slog as by this point I had completed all of the open world stuff I wanted to do, so it was really just these constantly terrible missions left.

2. Speaking of killing 50 guys every mission, you are also never getting shot from a story sense, even with how painfully realistic the game is trying to portray everything. There is a mission in Ch. 3 where you do get shot and you are out for weeks, but apparently in my time killing hundreds of other people I never get shot once.

3. Continuing on with Ch. 5, the vast majority of the chapter could be removed and replaced by a short cutscene only at the games benefit IMO as its already a long game and the story of this chapter is simply uninteresting.

4. Ch. 6 has you riding across INSANE distances (double or triple previous chapters) for quests and sidequests that aren't even close to one another. While I wouldn't of minded this early I had already heavily traversed these areas exploring earlier in the game and they are all so far out it just wastes so much time at a point where the story and the story missions are just at their worst and I really wanted to reach the end.

5. The entire food mechanic is just terribly done. I ate whenever I was at medium core and I was underweight the entire game, also because of how basic it is there is little downside and food is literally just everywhere.

6. Money has no value in the game after Ch. 2

7. The main game doesn't involve the SW section of the map at all.

8. The camp is poorly explained, like really poorly and too much tutorial stuff (fishing for instance) is locked behind missions. I didn't even realize there was a donation ledger until I became annoyed by the lack of fast travel (I was heavily exploring the entire map) near the end of Ch. 2 and looked up if there was anyway to get it online and someone mentioned the ledger.

9. Guns being removed from my character and placed on the horse, god that was annoying.

A few things I enjoyed:

1. The writing and voice acting is great throughout, the general story not really, but the beat by beat writing was just a joy.

2. Initially exploring was quite fun as thats really why I play open world games.

3. Gun visual customization.

4. Ch. 2-4 were really solid and I enjoyed the general structure and story. It really helped that a lot of the early quests involve more mundane acts such as hunting, fishing, drinking, stealing a single wagon or horse etc. I wish they would of kept up with this mission style more as the game progressed into Ch. 4 as this mission style became quite rare.

Like:

• Most things, my favorite game of 2018

Dislike:

• Only being able to carry one animal pelt at a time
• Not being able to clean guns, or other functions at camp
• Not being able to order drinks/smoke during card games
• My horse dying while following me during story mission

Dislike:

• My horse running straight into trees/rocks even when I'm actively trying to steer it away.
• Seeing the same camp interrupts multiple times/too often.
• The story goes in circles in the middle for a while.
• RDO having nothing to do.

Like:

• The rest of it.

I'll add a bunch of my Likes/Dislikes (things that are both).

• Side mission story arcs - If you follow them it can be quite interesting but doing one and doing one a few chapters later and seeing characters act as though things have happened that you haven't seen if you haven't done the missions in between is really jarring.
• The tempo - The game likes to take it's time with things and I really dig that aspect of the game. As long as I have the time. If I want to play for an hour at most, the game feels like it's trying it's best to keep me from accomlishing anything of value.
• Masks - It's cool that you can wear a skull or a pig's head, but I wish it could be used instead of your bandana when they tell you to hide your face in missions etc.
• Picking up hats - Another fun thing to do once in a while as a goof, taking someone's hat after you bested them in gun kata. But you never get to keep those hats, that's a bummer.

I've had a strange run w RDR2 so far. It took me a month to get out of chapter 2 because every time I turned my PS4 on, no part of me wanted to slog through this slooowww game. After listening to the GOTY podcasts, I told myself I needed to see this story. And I'm glad I hunkered down and decided to power through it. I'm in the early moments of chapter 4 and loving it. I'm just mainlining the story and occasionally doing stranger missions. But now I'm getting a little worried because I've read from multiple people that chapter 5 is when the game becomes a slog.

Dislike: The cores system

Like: Everything else.