Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a difficult game to love. It is defined by an uncompromising storytelling vision and an equally rigid approach to game design, leaving the two elements in a state of awkward, constant tension for the duration of the experience. Over the course of a massive campaign, this fundamental dissonance ultimately outstays its welcome. Because the game mechanics so frequently fight against the player's time, I found myself burned out, eventually giving up on exploring the living, breathing world and abandoning some of the game's best content in the side missions.

Red Dead 2's world is, without a doubt, a staggering technical achievement. It looks and sounds exactly like an untamed wilderness, capturing the raw, isolating beauty of the American frontier with breathtaking visual fidelity and immaculate sound design. Within this space, the game introduces a variety of survival elements—like managing body weight, maintaining core bars, and dressing for the climate—that are surprisingly well-realized as a "survival-lite" experience. They offer just enough flavor to ground you in the setting without becoming a chore, primarily because you don't actually have to bother with them to progress. However, these mechanics carry no real weight because of the specific story the game is determined to tell. Because the narrative demands a linear, scripted path for Arthur and the gang, the survival elements feel less like meaningful systems and more like superficial window dressing, made completely irrelevant once the camp is upgraded and the economy leaves you with nothing left to buy.

When the game stops trying to be a simulator and embraces its blockbuster identity, it delivers spectacular action set pieces. The choreographed heist sequences—from robbing trains and banks to blowing up railway bridges—represent Rockstar at the peak of its cinematic power. These set pieces are backed by a combat system that feels incredibly punchy and satisfying, delivering heavy gunplay that is amplified a hundredfold by the return of the Dead Eye targeting system. Slipping into slow motion to paint targets makes you feel like the ultimate, dangerous gunslinger. Unfortunately, the game's pacing and structural rigidity actively trample this feeling more often than not. The forced slow-walking zones are a frequent annoyance, grinding your momentum to a painful halt and occasionally destroying the immersion entirely—such as when a character you are actively trying to save gets killed simply because the game refuses to let you run.

This frustration extends directly into the narrative, which attempts to be a profound western epic but ultimately delivers a juvenile morality play. Dutch van der Linde’s descent is entirely predictable, and not just because players know his fate from the first game; his manipulation and cyclical rhetoric are glaringly obvious from the start. The script further suffers as a period piece by letting modern 2018 "correct thought" leak all over what should be authentic 1899 mindsets. Instead of forcing the player to wrestle with the messy, uncomfortable biases common among outlaws at the turn of the century, the writers equip the gang with anachronistically progressive social outlooks to keep them palatable to a modern audience. By prioritizing these contemporary sensibilities and forcing players to manually trigger arbitrary inputs just to sit through horseback dialogue, the game's deliberate cinematic beats consistently choke out the freedom of the sandbox, resulting in a beautiful, four-out-of-five-star epic that is severely compromised by its own self-importance.

I really wanted to like RDR2. I loved the initial intro I had to it in 2018. I was excited to play it when I finally put my head down and played it. However, by the end of the game I was impatient with it. The gunplay is excellent, riding a horse feels great, the lasso is still a ton of fun. The sandbox is great, the story is overlong, self-important, but well told. This game could have been so much more if a way had been found to reconcile it's prestige drama ambitions with it's cowboy simulator bona-fides. As it stands, I didn't enjoy every minute I spent with RDR2 but it was way more minutes enjoyed than not.

Immense.

My only criticisms are that to 100% the game you have to be good at something OTHER than playing Red Dead. I did not pick up a video game to have to learn how to play poker and be good at and still sit for however many flipping hours to complete a tiny fraction of the game.

New Austin being painfully empty and devoid of events, characters and life in general is such a waste as it's an absolutely massive part of the map

Gameplay - 9.95/10

The controls are very responsive. Difficulty is just so good in a sense that there are no difficulty spike that will ruin your experience throughout the game. There are so many activities that you can do like fishing, playing poker and hunting if you want to take a break from the story. I'll never forget that you can collect baseball cards too in the game. I rated this 9.8 out of 10 because throughout my game play, I always get confused for the buttons when I'm switching my guns. I think it a me problem.

Story and Characters - 10/10

No words can describe how the story is so good. The narrative and the characters gave life to the game especially in their voice acting. My favorite character will always be Arthur. After I played the game, I realized that this is the perfect ending. What I always thought is if John just didn't look back like Arthur said, his fate in red dead redemption 1 will not happen. Arthur always wishes to John to live his life with his family.

Visuals and Art Design - 10/10

Graphics is perfect to me! No words needed. The one thing I remember in this game is the time when the gang rescues Jack from the Braithwaite family. I don't know why but that scene will always be my epitome how the art design is very good.

Sound and Music - 10/10

in this type of game, I always make sure if the sound effect is realistic. It did not fail me. Every step in the terrain, it changes its sound depending on what terrain you step in. Background noises will always be there. If you're in St. Denis, you will always hear the people rumbling in the background, horses and factories running. Song selection are very good! Country songs will always be the best genres in this type of game. I'll always remember the last mission of Arthur playing the song "That's The Way It Is". That is one of my best moments in playing the game.

World and Immersion - 10/10

Since this is an open-world game, this is the criteria that will stand out in this game. You can do many things in this game. Fishing, Hunting, playing poker, drink at the saloon till you're drunk and even collecting baseball cards! There are so many side quests that even I didn't manage to play them all. Even you finished the main story, you can still complete other quests and you can manage to get 100% if you really want to experience the whole content of the game!

Value & Longevity - 10/10

If we're talking about the price vs. contents and experience of the game, then I can say that RDR2 is super cheap for the amount of contents Rockstar has brought to this game. I bought this game when Steam went to sale. So I recommend to buy this if Steam has sale. The game most of the time is on sale as far as I know. 100% I will replay this and maybe getting a 100% completion.

FINAL SCORE - 9.99/10

Last thoughts: No doubt that this should be the GOTY of 2018! I thank Rockstar for making this wonderful game.

It's already hard to play video games in my limited free time and "exhausting" games like this make it even harder. I've bought the game 6 months ago and today I've finally lost my interest during Epilogue - Part 1. As a person who already played Red Dead Redemption, I think that the story is pretty much pointless after that point in the game.

What's good about the game?

The game world itself. The graphics, sounds, music, attention to detail, animals, strangers, interactivity, random events etc... Apart from some annoyances here and there, all of that works great together! Even after so many hours playing it, I couldn't stop myself to admire what I was seeing. I'm genuinely amazed at how good video game technology has become.

Best moments of the game

Not the main missions, not the side missions, just you, wandering around world map and stumbling upon mysteries, the great sense of discovery.

Most memorable mission

A Fine Night of Debauchery. Playing poker while Strauss is signaling you from behind your opponents. That was really creative.

What's bad about the game?

Lack of choices in main missions, both gameplay-wise and story-wise. It's extremely contradicting with huge freedom in the open world. And it's even worse that the game teases you with choices in some missions. It's not fully linear and it's not fully non-linear either.

You can level up your abilities with open world activities like hunting, crafting etc... Which is good becase this way they don't feel like a total waste. Still, I'm not sure if it's necessary to have a high level character to finish the story missions.

Satchel upgrades don't make any sense. If you use an iguana pelt, your satchel can carry more materials, but if you use let's say a racoon pelt, then your satchel can carry more provisions. The only satchel that matters is the "legendary satchel" which increases all carrying capacity. But you can only craft it if you crafted all the other ones. But again, I've finished Arthur Morgan's story with only the first satchel upgrade. I don't think they are necessary at all.

Animal pelt quality doesn't make sense either. "Clean kill" is a great mechanic and pelt quality should've been only dependent to that. Instead, sometimes you should wait really long for an animal with a perfect pelt to pop up, which can be annoying. I assume using a bait increase your chances, but I'm not sure.

Chapter 5 is laughable

It's like that filler episode from your favorite TV show.

Some side activities and minor characters are also laughable

Game: You should take care of your camp and feed your people

Also game: Hey Arthur, find me dinosaur bones

This may be a personal choice but while some wacky characters are great (like Bertram and Magnifico), others seem out of place.

There are just too many characters

I think video games are better with less characters. Of course I cared for Arthur Morgan but there were so many times where I forgot about other characters' names and back stories. Honestly, I never saw other characters as Arthur's family.

Final Verdict

If you don't mind investing huge amount of play time, you should definitely play. I'm not sure if I should play the next Rockstar video game, whenever it comes out. Or, another huge game from another company. What's next with "realism" and "chores" in video games? Do you think we will go to work and pay our bills in GTA VI? I hope not.

I don't think I'd normally be interested in this game, but after hearing all the hype about it, I had to try it for myself. And for the most part, Red Dead Redemption II lives up to the hype.

The game has an immersive story, breathtaking open world, and characters for you to love and hate in equal measure. What's more, the game comes with an RPG spin which includes your ability to decide key parts of the story, side quests, collectibles, activities... You name it, RDR2 has it.

And you'll explore it, too. The game really forces you to slow down and explore what they offer. You can tell from the excruciatingly slow walking speed of your character, and the penalty of paying for fast travel. When I first started (and again at intense points of the story), I was frustrated by this slowness. But overall, I came to appreciate it, because I was blown away by all that the game had to offer. As much as I wanted to see the story play out, I just had to stop and check out that interesting feature on the map, or complete a side quest, because in this game, the journey really matters more than the destination.

At other times, however, I found the abundance of experiences overwhelming and frustrating. There are so many mechanics it's nearly impossible to keep track of them all--feeding and clothing your character, for example. The sheer number of activities mean that the controls double up on a lot of functions, and that sometimes made it hard to remember how to perform a specific function. And the controls themselves could be clunky and difficult to master.

For those reasons, I don't love this game as much as many others seem to love it. Overall though, the game lives up to the reviews and the hype. I had a lot of fun, and I know I"ll be diving back in and rounding out some of the side adventures as soon as I get a chance.

I had a love/hate relationship with RDRII.

I adored the first game for it’s fun gameplay and tragic, engrossing story. The second game, serving as a prequel to the first, absolutley fleshes out and deepens that story in a way I really didn’t expect it could do so successfully. The character of Arthur Morgan starts out seeming like a generic western hero but develops into a richly developed protagonist whose arc enriches that of John Marston’s very successfully. And without giving any spoilers, I’ll say that this one is a tragedy (like the first); powerful and bold of Rockstar to continue telling these bittersweet western stories (when they could easily have just put out a fun shoot em up prequel).

Gameplay wise, the game, for the most part, feels very familiar. It continues the core mechanics of it’s predecessor and GTA cousins. But this one is very unique in the way it belabours it’s mechanics and gives them details and nuances which make the game highly immersive when compared to other Rockstar experiences. When the game is working on you it will suck you in and get you invested like few games can. But if you go too far off script, the gameplay starts to feel extremely tedious, which is the only real complaint I have about it. Unfortunately, I did spend a little bit too much time exploring on some occassions and found myself fighting with the mechanics (hence the love/hate relationship).

Overall, this felt like one of the most unique gaming experiences I’ve had (despite being built on a very familiar formula). I love it through and through for all it’s audacity and depth; though it will be a long time before I revisit (if I even do).