This one is difficult for me to rate, due to its age - I wished that I had played this when it was initially released, as my issues with the game are mostly game play related and especially due to its old age. And this is especially apparent when you just played RDR2 beforehand.
Read Dead Redeption is the sequel story to RDR2, and surprisingly in RDR2 you don't play the actual protagonist but another person of the group that John, who is the protagonist in RDR, rides with. Story-wise it is in the same category as RDR2 - it's well written and told, though I felt RDR2 was a tad more straight forward and a tad more emotional and engaging.
Gameplay-wise everything is more difficult and clonkier. E.g. breaking in horses, which was already a hard thing to do in RDR2, where you got assistance on the screen, was even harder in RDR, and here you didn't see any progressbar or info on which direction the horse moves and which button to press. Hunting is much harder as well, as is collecting herbs. And a lot of time nothing really happens and the world is uneventful; this is totally different to RDR2, where you actually love to spent as much time in any location because it is just fun to interact with the environment, to have strange chance-meetings, or to find details of western life. Heck I just visited things like theatre plays or the cinema, and enjoyed watching a show (without any mission or need to do so) in RDR2, and enjoyed the time. In RDR however I felt like progressing with the story as fast as possible. Looking around was not really fun, and felt like just wasting time - same is true for a lot of the traveling times in the game. On the plus side, I was pretty fascinated to see how many of the ideas that where novel and interesting to me in RDR2 and that felt really important for the overall gameplay, was actually already there in RDR, and only got refined for RDR2.
So this seems pretty revolutionary to me, and reading contemporary test results, it was. On the other hand, to me everything in RDR felt quite clonky, and I wasn't sure if this is just due to the age of the game, or also the programming. I don't have many references as in those years I hardly played any games, and especially no AAA titles. The only comparison that I can make is with Assassin's Creed. AC1 got released in 2007, and this one is probably the one that compares most to the feel of the gameplay of RDR. From 2009-2011 we have the entire Ezio trilogy, and this already had an incredible smothness in its controls and in the movement. Everything feels more agile and just simply better than it did with RDR. Also it was more fun exploring in games like AC2, Brotherhood or Revelations, than it was in RDR. This is why I rate it at average - and that is from todays perspective, having played a lot newer games - and especially after having played RDR2 before RDR1. In 2010 I'd had probably rated it higher - not sure if it would have been a 4/5 or even a 5/5.
PS: Btw. I am not sure which to suggest to play first. You most definitely don't need RDR1 to understand RDR2, as RDR2 is a prequel and focuses on another character entirely. John is just one of the side characters whose story we get to experience through the eyes of Arthur. So having played John first, and then seeing Johns story in rear view (as it was intended) works perfectly fine. On the other hand, playing RDR2 first, it will give you much more (and probably needed) backstories to all the characters you hunt down in RDR; I think playing RDR1 first, will give you the feeling that you are just killing a bunch of random dudes; in RDR2 each of these characters is filled with life and this even helps you get a little bit more engaged in RDR1 - RDR1 doesn't manage this on its own. HOWEVER from a gameplay-perspective it makes so much more sense playing RDR1 before RDR2, because the other way round you'll probably have a much worse time with RDR1.
Read Dead Redeption is the sequel story to RDR2, and surprisingly in RDR2 you don't play the actual protagonist but another person of the group that John, who is the protagonist in RDR, rides with. Story-wise it is in the same category as RDR2 - it's well written and told, though I felt RDR2 was a tad more straight forward and a tad more emotional and engaging.
Gameplay-wise everything is more difficult and clonkier. E.g. breaking in horses, which was already a hard thing to do in RDR2, where you got assistance on the screen, was even harder in RDR, and here you didn't see any progressbar or info on which direction the horse moves and which button to press. Hunting is much harder as well, as is collecting herbs. And a lot of time nothing really happens and the world is uneventful; this is totally different to RDR2, where you actually love to spent as much time in any location because it is just fun to interact with the environment, to have strange chance-meetings, or to find details of western life. Heck I just visited things like theatre plays or the cinema, and enjoyed watching a show (without any mission or need to do so) in RDR2, and enjoyed the time. In RDR however I felt like progressing with the story as fast as possible. Looking around was not really fun, and felt like just wasting time - same is true for a lot of the traveling times in the game. On the plus side, I was pretty fascinated to see how many of the ideas that where novel and interesting to me in RDR2 and that felt really important for the overall gameplay, was actually already there in RDR, and only got refined for RDR2.
So this seems pretty revolutionary to me, and reading contemporary test results, it was. On the other hand, to me everything in RDR felt quite clonky, and I wasn't sure if this is just due to the age of the game, or also the programming. I don't have many references as in those years I hardly played any games, and especially no AAA titles. The only comparison that I can make is with Assassin's Creed. AC1 got released in 2007, and this one is probably the one that compares most to the feel of the gameplay of RDR. From 2009-2011 we have the entire Ezio trilogy, and this already had an incredible smothness in its controls and in the movement. Everything feels more agile and just simply better than it did with RDR. Also it was more fun exploring in games like AC2, Brotherhood or Revelations, than it was in RDR. This is why I rate it at average - and that is from todays perspective, having played a lot newer games - and especially after having played RDR2 before RDR1. In 2010 I'd had probably rated it higher - not sure if it would have been a 4/5 or even a 5/5.
PS: Btw. I am not sure which to suggest to play first. You most definitely don't need RDR1 to understand RDR2, as RDR2 is a prequel and focuses on another character entirely. John is just one of the side characters whose story we get to experience through the eyes of Arthur. So having played John first, and then seeing Johns story in rear view (as it was intended) works perfectly fine. On the other hand, playing RDR2 first, it will give you much more (and probably needed) backstories to all the characters you hunt down in RDR; I think playing RDR1 first, will give you the feeling that you are just killing a bunch of random dudes; in RDR2 each of these characters is filled with life and this even helps you get a little bit more engaged in RDR1 - RDR1 doesn't manage this on its own. HOWEVER from a gameplay-perspective it makes so much more sense playing RDR1 before RDR2, because the other way round you'll probably have a much worse time with RDR1.