In the 120 hours it took me to finish the game, I didn't use the fast travel even once. The world is beautifully crafted, there's so much attention to detail and its so full of life, that I feared I'll miss something if I'd use it.

Riding, fishing, hunting, just exploring this world can take so many hours of fun. I never enjoyed riding and exploring so much like in this game. Witcher 3 comes close in that regard, but the world in RDR2 feels way more alive.

There's always something going on and you're not solely a spectator, you're part of it. People travelling and camping, bandits robbing a wagon or kidnapping someone, hunters mauled by predators, fishermans, animals lurking in the woods, wild horses running in open praires.

Whole ecosystems with a fidelity in their representation that is really impressive, from the damp swamps of Lemoyne to the cold mountains of the Grizzlies, breathtaking sights in each and every one of these lands.

The towns and cities follow the same design quality as the rest of the game, extremely detailed, with their own routines, people coming and going, living their life. Saint Denis might be one of the most beautiful and detailed cities I ever saw in a game, the moment you step on it you'll understand what I mean.


The physics engine that made IV the ultimate GTA experience (for me at least) has come back to bring this game to life. Simply shooting at someone can have so many different outcomes it never feels like you're watching the same animation over and over.

Enemies will fall off the horse to get trampled to death, they will get tangled in the stirrups, their corpses getting dragged until the horse calms down eventually falling dead on the ground. They'll get shot down like a sack of potatoes from the impact of a shotgun, face blown out in half. And more.

The way animals move, interact with each other, get wounded and slowly die when you hunt them, how it feels to fall from your horse or crash into a wagon, every single one of these things has a weight of its own, is not just a couple of ragdolls colliding with each other without a sense of impact, it feels genuine.

The chase sequences, shootouts, robbing trains and stores, shooting up a gang hideout, bounty hunting, I really enjoyed all of the different activities, there's not a lack of things to do and action is a plenty. Every one of these is fun to play and feel different each time thanks to the physics engine and its unique interactions.

Although I would've loved to see some more guns, there's quite a good amount, but they all seem pretty similar to one another in how they feel. Once you've used a repeater rifle, you used them all. Same with shotguns, and revolvers.
The only guns that really differentiate from other categories where the semi auto pistols, which were also way too powerful when used in dead-eye mode.


I did not experience a single frame rate drop or a crash to desktop in the entirety of my 120 hours playthrough. Not. Even. Once.

Bear in mind I'm playing on a fairly decent setup so your results may vary, but the consistency of the frame rate was really impressive considering the scope of the game and how good it looks.

I only experienced a half a second freeze/stutter sometimes when entering Saint Denis, as if the game was loading the city, but it happened only when entering for the first time of each game session, and no more after that.

And something that I hate about open world games, which is texture, grass, or NPC pop-in, is not present in this game, at all. That was another technical aspect that really impressed me.

Other Rockstar games, Kingdom Come, Skyrim, you name it, almost every open world game has some degree of pop-in issues, sometimes is subtle, other times is unbereable (KCD, I'm looking at you), well Red Dead Redemption 2 got rid of that, completely.

That's commendable, it looks wonderful, runs smooth, and doesn't suffer from common technical issues other games do, even games with much more smaller and less detailed worlds than this one.


Some stuff that could've been better, Rockstar needs to address their mission design which feels a bit outdated, linear, it doesn't cut it anymore. Sometimes it holds on your hand too much to the point of feeling that it treats you as an idiot who would get lost if a big prompt isn't telling you what to do next every 5 minutes.

The honour system doesn't make much sense. You get penalized for petty stuff like looting a corpse on the side of the road, starting a fight with a person who threatens you (and even if they start shooting at you) or accepting a reward after saving someone from a wild animal or a robbery.

Some side missions often show another side of Arthur, who's a good hearted fellow, someone who, despite being a bandit, still retains some humanity. He's clearly not a murdering sociopath like some of the fellers he hangs around with.

But then you go into another mission, that have you go beat the sh1t out of a working man just because he cannot repay a debt, or steal money from innocent people, then kill half a town to escape. Doesn't make any sense to me.

It doesn't matter how you play outside of missions, it won't change anything, if you want to be good, you'll still be dragged to do stupid stuff and kill people for no reason other than "we're outlaws" and "I have a plan, just blindly follow and trust me, dont ask any questions...".

The pacing of the story feels weird, it tries to give a sense of urgency but then it drags you doing errands and stuff that takes time and isn't really important nor urgent. Also, I would've loved to see what happened in Blackwater, since its the main reason the band is on the run, but you never really know what happened, you only get told that "something went really bad and we had to leave".

A first mission similar to the GTA V bank robbery where you could play what happened in Blackwater to experience first hand the event that actually kickstarted the whole story, would've been a much better introduction to the game than the rather confusing one we got.

Another thing that bothers me a little is New Austin having very little content once you reach that part of the game. I get it, its the epilogue, the game has to end sometime, the content can't be infinite.

But why not making it possible to visit this part of the map with Arthur and having at least a couple more quests? Maybe they planned to use this portion of the map for a future DLC and then discarded that idea? Who knows.

But despite all that, the overall quality of the game was enough to outshine any negative aspects of it in my experience. This is truly a gem of a gem, worth a try even of you don't like open world games much, or just don't like games from Rockstar in general.

Give this one a chance, you won't regret it.

10/10.