in full transparency, i only think this game is "pretty good" as far as rockstar games go, but the story is absolutely incredible and any game that makes me cry gets automatic brownie points
also the low honor ending is the most fitting ending for everyone no matter how much your heart tells you otherwise
also the low honor ending is the most fitting ending for everyone no matter how much your heart tells you otherwise
Skip to the end for a tl;dr
I really, really wanted to like this game (and to a certain extent I did), but damn was I let down by so many things, far too many to justify all of those "10/10s" that the game was getting by journalists before coming out.
If you played the game you already know the positive aspects: the story, the acting, the soundtrack, the scenery and so on; all of those can't still sadly hide how horrendously sluggish, slow-paced and hard to manovreur the game can be most of the time.
They pushed a lot on the graphics like they kind of did on the first one, and on that aspect they also kept the wonky frame rate - good luck trying to manually aim when there's more than a couple of things happening on the screen, adding to consideration how morbidly slow they made the character move!
"Realism" in this game was something that a lot of people liked - I personally didn't; everytime you move your character has to do a start animation and a stop animation, slowly, making the controls feel delayed and unresponsive (both walking and on horse), and everything becomes a chore: looting means weird camera angles and little twitches on your analog stick to properly focus items, quick menus are overbloated and not quick at all, walking in your own damn camp is the only thing you can do and no running allowed meaning that trying to talk with NPCs also means feeling like you're walking through quicksands.. oh, and let's not forget about cooking!
You can make items that greatly recover your hp, dead eye and stamina by cooking meat mostly, and guess what? You need to do them one by one, having around 7/10 seconds between each piece of meat cooked (that you have to click and confirm everytime, meaning you can't even go afk, let's say) so you can imagine how fun that is when you have 20 pieces of meat to cook that you can't cook in bulk.
It's terrible, slow and it doesn't make any sense - it's why you don't push so much realism on RPG elements, it's why you don't put things that people are trying to forget when playing video games - boring real life chores.
Gosh, even the quick travel requires you to
- be in a city (which means you'll have to ride there if you're not at your base camp)
- find the quick travel NPC on the map
- talk with the coachman
- "wHeRe Do YoU wAnNa gO SiR!"
- cutscene showing you that the wagon is moving
- loading the chunk of map where you'll get teleported
- cutscene showing you that you have arrived, dismounting the wagon
- the end. that's a quick damn travel.
tl;dr: the game has an absurd amount of quality when it comes to certain sides of the production such as cinematics, the acting and the "alive" open world, but fails to be a smooth experience and you'll constantly feel like you're dragging your feet to reach the most basic goals, featuring long boring activities and limited quick travel options. In total, a 50/60 hours adventure that could probably be cut to 30/40h if you were to remove all the (made on purpose by rockstar, mind you) sluggy features.
I really, really wanted to like this game (and to a certain extent I did), but damn was I let down by so many things, far too many to justify all of those "10/10s" that the game was getting by journalists before coming out.
If you played the game you already know the positive aspects: the story, the acting, the soundtrack, the scenery and so on; all of those can't still sadly hide how horrendously sluggish, slow-paced and hard to manovreur the game can be most of the time.
They pushed a lot on the graphics like they kind of did on the first one, and on that aspect they also kept the wonky frame rate - good luck trying to manually aim when there's more than a couple of things happening on the screen, adding to consideration how morbidly slow they made the character move!
"Realism" in this game was something that a lot of people liked - I personally didn't; everytime you move your character has to do a start animation and a stop animation, slowly, making the controls feel delayed and unresponsive (both walking and on horse), and everything becomes a chore: looting means weird camera angles and little twitches on your analog stick to properly focus items, quick menus are overbloated and not quick at all, walking in your own damn camp is the only thing you can do and no running allowed meaning that trying to talk with NPCs also means feeling like you're walking through quicksands.. oh, and let's not forget about cooking!
You can make items that greatly recover your hp, dead eye and stamina by cooking meat mostly, and guess what? You need to do them one by one, having around 7/10 seconds between each piece of meat cooked (that you have to click and confirm everytime, meaning you can't even go afk, let's say) so you can imagine how fun that is when you have 20 pieces of meat to cook that you can't cook in bulk.
It's terrible, slow and it doesn't make any sense - it's why you don't push so much realism on RPG elements, it's why you don't put things that people are trying to forget when playing video games - boring real life chores.
Gosh, even the quick travel requires you to
- be in a city (which means you'll have to ride there if you're not at your base camp)
- find the quick travel NPC on the map
- talk with the coachman
- "wHeRe Do YoU wAnNa gO SiR!"
- cutscene showing you that the wagon is moving
- loading the chunk of map where you'll get teleported
- cutscene showing you that you have arrived, dismounting the wagon
- the end. that's a quick damn travel.
tl;dr: the game has an absurd amount of quality when it comes to certain sides of the production such as cinematics, the acting and the "alive" open world, but fails to be a smooth experience and you'll constantly feel like you're dragging your feet to reach the most basic goals, featuring long boring activities and limited quick travel options. In total, a 50/60 hours adventure that could probably be cut to 30/40h if you were to remove all the (made on purpose by rockstar, mind you) sluggy features.
10/10 - Masterpiece
CPT: 94 h
CPT: 94 h
Great game, asks far too much of your time but the trade is fair.
A wonderful movie, a terribly boring game.
I don't know why this didn't click with me. I love Red Dead Redemption! This game just feels different though. It's so bogged down. Everything is so slow. It's like Arthur moves through molasses. The most frustrating part is that there are moments where I get that same feeling of awe and excitement that I got from RRD, but then it is quickly squashed by an animation or action that takes forever to complete.
They made a sequel to one of my top 10 games and I didn't even finish it. Nice horse balls, though.
I liked the first RDR more and I would even prefer the zombie one over this. Don't get me wrong though, this game was loads of fun and also hella gorgeous. I actually played almost the whole game in the first person perspective, it's that beautiful. Immense attention to detail. Yes it's longer but I've played long games before but this FELT long. It was like watching a draggy movie. It could've been paced better.
Side note: Sadie Adler for the win.
Side note: Sadie Adler for the win.
Maybe it's because I expected to hate this game due to my feelings on the first one and only played it since it was free on gamepass, but my expectations were blown away. Don't get me wrong, character movement and combat and the way Rockstar refuses to allow you to do anything other than what they want you to is a major negative (seriously, I failed a stealth mission because I approached the objective from 3 feet further to the left than it wanted me to (I was not detected). That's inexcusable). Still, the overall experience was captivating and I had a lot of fun living out Arthur Morgan's life. I finished the game at 86% completion, which was everything except the collect-a-thon side quests that didn't seem fun at all.
The first rockstar game I played, as well as the first PS4 game I played, just fantastic and beautiful. I should re play all over again
Pretty, fun combat but really boring and way too much talking
I wasn't very good at combat but I enjoyed the story. Feeling genuine contempt for some characters is quite impressive as I usually find it difficult to immerse myself in a game.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is indeed a masterpiece. It is a very long game especially if you do side quests and sit around a lot to listen to conversations and interact with other characters. But it rewards you for the time you put in the game and adds to the tragic story.
Arthur Morgan is maybe one of my favorite video game protagonists ever and the supporting cast is also as well written. Arthur Morgan's struggle in the game is well fleshed out and Rockstar does a great job in making players feel Arthur's emotions through his journey. Characters like Dutch, Hosea, John, Javier and many more can steal the scenes as well. Performances by the voice and mocap actors are done so well.
Not only that, this is a game that challenges the players not only in the gameplay but with the themes about violence, outlaw life, westward expansion in the US, idealism, and even family and love.
And of course, the gameplay is spectacular. The gun physics feel satisfying and has girth to it. Riding through the large map almost never feels like a chore due to the many interactive moments you encounter in the large land. The game is also drop dead gorgeous.
Arthur Morgan is maybe one of my favorite video game protagonists ever and the supporting cast is also as well written. Arthur Morgan's struggle in the game is well fleshed out and Rockstar does a great job in making players feel Arthur's emotions through his journey. Characters like Dutch, Hosea, John, Javier and many more can steal the scenes as well. Performances by the voice and mocap actors are done so well.
Not only that, this is a game that challenges the players not only in the gameplay but with the themes about violence, outlaw life, westward expansion in the US, idealism, and even family and love.
And of course, the gameplay is spectacular. The gun physics feel satisfying and has girth to it. Riding through the large map almost never feels like a chore due to the many interactive moments you encounter in the large land. The game is also drop dead gorgeous.
if this is the future of video games i'm going making a time machine and going back to the past
vida antes/depois de rdr 2
Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' 2 was a great experience that could've been more yee-haw if there was less riding horses for hours and more shooting cowboys' hats off.
Also, chapter 5 was totally unnecessary and ruined the momentum.
But I'm able to forgive most of the game's flaws (and it has many, believe me) because the overall experience was superb. Great characters, an extremely detailed world, and lots of side content made it a very immersive experience for me.
Also, chapter 5 was totally unnecessary and ruined the momentum.
But I'm able to forgive most of the game's flaws (and it has many, believe me) because the overall experience was superb. Great characters, an extremely detailed world, and lots of side content made it a very immersive experience for me.
A truly beautiful looking game. The world is such a great sight, which is lucky since you'll be riding through the same spots over and over. The soundtrack also surprised me with just how good it can get. It's packed full of content, and the world seems to react and evolve to your actions seamlessly.
But the game just feels so slow. I don't mean the pacing, I mean every little thing. Every small action will require you to do something that would otherwise be automatic for user experience purposes in other games. And then there's the amount of times the game forces you to go at its pace rather than your own. Sooooo many missions start out with "Follow X character to X location" where you have to go at a snails pace while listening to the dialogue. It's like the game is full of hidden cutscenes that disguise themselves as gameplay.
The game practically needs to be carried by its story. Luckily the story IS great, with equally well written characters, and if it wasn’t for the heavy flaws dragging it down, the game could have been amazing. But as it is it just kind of annoyed me how often Rockstar seemed to think “This story is so unbelievably amazing that the player won’t mind hundreds of hours of slow progress to hear it all!”
This disguised gameplay can go way too far sometimes. Like it's one thing to make you personally travel to each location while listening to dialogue instead of just achieving the exact same purpose in a full cutscene, but there's a couple of times when you're watching an actual cutscene then all of a sudden you get a prompt to push the analogue stick to move forward. I just don't get it, the game desperately tries to force interaction into it in order to hide the fact there's so much story to get through.
The game also suffers from a lot of Rockstar's typical problems. Clunky controls, glitchy interactions (have fun trying to reposition yourself a few inchs constantly to get a certain prompt to light up). A couple of times I tried to run up to my horse and jump on top of it, only to accidentally tackle a poor bystander to the ground because it's attached to the exact same button. Speaking of which, it is way too easy to lose honor in this game. Randomly bumping into someone, which will happen a lot due to the horrible controls, can cause them to get angry and attack you, but if you dare defend yourself you lose honor and get a bounty on you.
It takes realism too far and suffers from it. For example, when you get sick health restoring items just stop working. That might not be too bad if it was a balancing effect from another thing (like maybe an alcoholic drink that raises your stats), but getting sick is a story forced plot point.
Want to loot a bunch of dead victims after a huge shoot out? Be prepared for your mission allies to coooonstantly scream at you to hurry up.
The world is full of stuff to do at least. I think that sometimes it's a bit too much of a chore though. Early on I did a mission that involved getting perfect carcasses of certain animals. You'd think that the sections on the map that have those animals drawn on them would spawn a lot of them, but it could take me 30 minutes to find a rabbit in a rabbit-marked area. Trying to catch a legendary fish could take 10 minutes of constantly rotating the analogue stick. Treasure maps are so vague they're unreadable most of the time. It's weird because when you're in a mission the game gives you plenty of info and direction, but anything outside of a mission and you're on your own with little to no hints, like if a camp friend wants an item. You have no idea where it is, the game doesn't tell you where it is. I guess the point is that, if you're not looking it up online, you're supposed to just be happy exploring and finding what you find free roam, but after I did a lot of them early-game, I found I was wasting so much time that by chapter 3 of the game I was just travelling from mission to mission, the idea of wasting time exploring every nook and cranny in such a huge world, with stiff controls, was daunting.
It's definitely not a bad game. Not at all. It has the story, it has the music, it has the characters, it has the level of depth, it has the gun mechanics (although I wouldn't mind those being a bit better due to the sheer amount of endless shoot outs you're forced in to). It just lacks a bit of polish and smoothing down, and to realise when realism becomes a chore.
But the game just feels so slow. I don't mean the pacing, I mean every little thing. Every small action will require you to do something that would otherwise be automatic for user experience purposes in other games. And then there's the amount of times the game forces you to go at its pace rather than your own. Sooooo many missions start out with "Follow X character to X location" where you have to go at a snails pace while listening to the dialogue. It's like the game is full of hidden cutscenes that disguise themselves as gameplay.
The game practically needs to be carried by its story. Luckily the story IS great, with equally well written characters, and if it wasn’t for the heavy flaws dragging it down, the game could have been amazing. But as it is it just kind of annoyed me how often Rockstar seemed to think “This story is so unbelievably amazing that the player won’t mind hundreds of hours of slow progress to hear it all!”
This disguised gameplay can go way too far sometimes. Like it's one thing to make you personally travel to each location while listening to dialogue instead of just achieving the exact same purpose in a full cutscene, but there's a couple of times when you're watching an actual cutscene then all of a sudden you get a prompt to push the analogue stick to move forward. I just don't get it, the game desperately tries to force interaction into it in order to hide the fact there's so much story to get through.
The game also suffers from a lot of Rockstar's typical problems. Clunky controls, glitchy interactions (have fun trying to reposition yourself a few inchs constantly to get a certain prompt to light up). A couple of times I tried to run up to my horse and jump on top of it, only to accidentally tackle a poor bystander to the ground because it's attached to the exact same button. Speaking of which, it is way too easy to lose honor in this game. Randomly bumping into someone, which will happen a lot due to the horrible controls, can cause them to get angry and attack you, but if you dare defend yourself you lose honor and get a bounty on you.
It takes realism too far and suffers from it. For example, when you get sick health restoring items just stop working. That might not be too bad if it was a balancing effect from another thing (like maybe an alcoholic drink that raises your stats), but getting sick is a story forced plot point.
Want to loot a bunch of dead victims after a huge shoot out? Be prepared for your mission allies to coooonstantly scream at you to hurry up.
The world is full of stuff to do at least. I think that sometimes it's a bit too much of a chore though. Early on I did a mission that involved getting perfect carcasses of certain animals. You'd think that the sections on the map that have those animals drawn on them would spawn a lot of them, but it could take me 30 minutes to find a rabbit in a rabbit-marked area. Trying to catch a legendary fish could take 10 minutes of constantly rotating the analogue stick. Treasure maps are so vague they're unreadable most of the time. It's weird because when you're in a mission the game gives you plenty of info and direction, but anything outside of a mission and you're on your own with little to no hints, like if a camp friend wants an item. You have no idea where it is, the game doesn't tell you where it is. I guess the point is that, if you're not looking it up online, you're supposed to just be happy exploring and finding what you find free roam, but after I did a lot of them early-game, I found I was wasting so much time that by chapter 3 of the game I was just travelling from mission to mission, the idea of wasting time exploring every nook and cranny in such a huge world, with stiff controls, was daunting.
It's definitely not a bad game. Not at all. It has the story, it has the music, it has the characters, it has the level of depth, it has the gun mechanics (although I wouldn't mind those being a bit better due to the sheer amount of endless shoot outs you're forced in to). It just lacks a bit of polish and smoothing down, and to realise when realism becomes a chore.
This game can't make up its mind if it wants to be a grand story, or an open-world immersive sandbox. The story is great and probably one of Rockstar's best, but everything falls apart when it comes to the gameplay. The gunplay is still shit, the movement feels delayed, and the constant mashing of the sprint button is the most annoying shit.
The camp system had a lot of potential to make this game stand out from other Rockstar titles, but they made that shit useless, the hunger system didn't really matter as the penalty of not eating wasn't that grand, and the morality system had no effect on Arthur's actions.
I really wanted to enjoy this game, but I just can't.
The camp system had a lot of potential to make this game stand out from other Rockstar titles, but they made that shit useless, the hunger system didn't really matter as the penalty of not eating wasn't that grand, and the morality system had no effect on Arthur's actions.
I really wanted to enjoy this game, but I just can't.
Absolutely incredible. One of the most immersive games I've ever played. The game world and its characters feel so realistic and alive.
The gameplay and gunplay aren't the best but I can give it a pass just because the game has an incredible presentation.
The gameplay and gunplay aren't the best but I can give it a pass just because the game has an incredible presentation.
a tour de force i didn't think rockstar had in them to make. that's the way it is.
could've done without the epilogue though, i think, or maybe i would've preferred it as DLC even if i appreciate it being released without it being paywalled.
could've done without the epilogue though, i think, or maybe i would've preferred it as DLC even if i appreciate it being released without it being paywalled.
played like sixteen hours and didn't see anything that excited me. incredibly well executed graphics for devastating labor costs, but seriously it just adds up to nothing for me.
A grand artistic achievement
This game took me waaay longer than I expected. It just didn't get boring. Usually I don't really enjoy too many side quests but i hardly ever followed the main storyline because everything was so much fun to do. It was worth the wait..
Very good story and graphics, immersive to a fault.
This is the best written videogame the west has to offer. The gameplay is just very been there done that, and the multiplayer is a huge misfire.
The fidelity of the scenery, the engaging story, the crazy set pieces all make this an amazing game to go through. My only problems are the inflexibility of mission structures and how the combat can get a bit boring after a while.
Its hard to review this game because its everything i wanted in Rdr 2 and its One of my fav games of all time. Now this is a prequel done right, it expanded on the World of red dead and idk i loved it everything from the story, to the beautiful landscapes and cinematic moments to the characters and soundtrack. This is a game that is really fun and also really boring sometimes!
Rockstar's finest achievement yet. This is not only the best Rockstar story ever told, but I find it difficult to name a better Western story ever told either.
REALLY did not grab me at all. It's fun to watch but a misery to play. R* has an insatiable obsession with "realism" in a manner that fully detracts from the gameplay when they go back to things like this. With RDR1, they managed to keep it in check enough to make a fun game with some quirks, but here it defines the experience, and no matter how good the story may be, how fun the character interactions are, it remains absolutely miserable to actually play, particularly with how horrendous the online mode is.
Gurrrrl