Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that oozes with potential, boasting an undoubtedly gripping story. However, its slow and repetitive gameplay loop hindered my ability to fully experience it. The cycle of horse riding, cutscenes, shootouts, and more cutscenes became tiresome after just 20 hours of play. My main gripe lies with the dated open-world design, especially when compared to more dynamic experiences like Breath of the Wild. While there's plenty to do in the world, it often feels like a mere hub for main quests, with a jarring transition between open-world exploration and story progression. The lengthy horse rides to reach quests only exacerbate the issue, and while random events could alleviate the monotony, they often lead you in the opposite direction, making travel even more tedious.
Maybe i'll revisit this game when Netflix makes a terrible adaptation of it just to dislike it even more, who knows

I didn't finish it, but I came very close to the end. I don't know where all this deep writing people talk of is. If it's somehow all stuck behind the endings, that's bad. What I saw of the writing was very mediocre and didn't lead anywhere. Many characters have no purpose to exist. I also don't buy the "lots of hidden symbolism" thing because it genuinely feels like SH2 fans online thought far deeper than the actual writers did.

And, unlike the first game, it was either great fun or really boring gameplay wise. Has some amazing areas but some which are absolute snoozefests. Not even talking in regards to the horror factor. Many areas just were really bland. The amazing areas make up for it, but I prefer how Silent Hill 1 was more consistent in terms of keeping my attention.

This is the most worthless game Nintendo's ever put out. Straight up unacceptable. There's 3 map layers. Sky, surface, and the depths. Surface is ripped straight from BotW. What was once a land painstakingly crafted from the ground up to be inherently wondrous to explore...Is reduced to mindlessly checking off a barrage of F tier copy paste content. There's borderline NOTHING new or surprising to find. And you get NOTHING for wasting a hundred hours engaging with it. The caves and wells add nothing to the game. This was such a cool opportunity for them to really FILL the map. Expand towns, introduce new ones, flesh out the enemy variety, and fill the world with music. An exciting "rebuilt Hyrule" approach that links the old Zelda style with the new in a very natural way. I genuinely don't think that's a lot to ask of this series. But - they did nothing. Heck with the removal of a strong enemy concept like the guardians, and the artificially tripled size of the world, I'd argue enemy variety has been made worse.

The sky and depths fare even worse. The tutorial island is the only large sky island. The rest are tiny and filled to the brim with copy pasted content. The depths themselves are the biggest waste of time in the industry. You can get more engaging gameplay and sense of wonder out of heckin' Cookie Clicker than the depths. What you initially assume will be a dangerous, scary place with a lot to discover...Pretty much IMMEDIATELY reveals itself to be so devoid of meaningful content or even hazards, that you're not missing any information by leaving it pitch black. The classic Poes are reduced to mindless collectibles scattered across the floor. Woulda been sick to hunt down a variety of ghosts, like a fully realized version of hunting the 10 poes in Hyrule Field in OOT. But alas, you're merely fighting 99% enemies from BotW, or getting rewards that are merely costume pieces from BotW's DLC or Amiibos.

Dungeons have never been less interesting. They in no way resemble the classics and are just less creative divine beasts. Goodbye giant walking animal mechs you have some control of, hello random tiny floating island in the sky. Story sucks too. Cop out ending ruining the one and only cool moment. Rest is slow, meandering, and repetitive with dreadful writing. Ganondorf is wasted. No attempt was even feigned to tie this game into the series overall lore let alone timeline. Frustratingly the response to this issue is often "they never cared" which I disagree with strongly. This game's story is so lazy we have to rely on what is made up on the spot in interviews to even connect it to BotW properly and even then there's inconsistencies at every turn. The fuse gimmick adds very little to the overall experience. Not super useful or gracefully implemented. I can't pretend to care about how technically impressive it might be, it doesn't do combat, ui, puzzles, or traversal any favors. Genuinely just a sloppy, unfocused, actively lame version of Banjo Nuts and Bolts. There's even more shrines in this than botw, with a higher percentage of horrible filler or boring non-puzzles for good measure. Being either insultingly slow, redundant tutorials for basic mechanics, functional tutorials for car parts, or a bad reward for poking around the sky islands or sidequests for a few minutes.
I have no doubt in my mind if the Zelda team was forced to make a brand new game from the ground up in under 2 years with no delays, they could have put out something more deserving of the Zelda name. But alas, another series falls to the irresistible temptation to make objectively bad content and spend 6+ years spreading it as thin as possible. The kind of design that's just allowed to happen these days is upsetting. Imagine telling someone in the year 2000 that in 20 years they'll release a Zelda game where you do the same exact low effort mission over 88 times in a row and that it's one of the only new things they added - and while they were at it 85% of the enemy types have been removed.

P.S. Trying out making shorter versions of my obscenely long reviews. This is still getting rather long, but compared to my original review... 4 paragraphs vs 18's a pretty good TL;DR. I just like to really explain myself when having unpopular opinions. Prolly gonna make a List of all the reviews I do this with. Follow for the eventual TL;DR of my TL;DR. Also the more I dig into this game the more upset I get and I just wanna keep babbling about it.