Chengzhi Zhang

Red Dead Redemption II - As good as everyone says?

It's a good game no doubt, and if you are hesitating just buy it, definitely worth the full price. A masterpiece of open world gaming experience and probably one of the best entertainment products video game industry has ever offered. But for me, it is not - as far as RPG elements go - up there on the same level as the classics like Skyrim, DOS2, and the Witcher 3. It never gets personal or emotional, and I just don't feel the kind of attachment and connection with the game world and its characters. The story is a bit generic and towards the end very predictable, and I might be wrong on this but most choices up until the very end do not seem to make any difference. You are just on for the ride, not really 'role playing'. Like when you are confronted by the lawmen, you should have the choice to be a traitor and rat on your gang, if it is a true RPG. But no, in this you have to follow the story, not create your own. Which is not necessarily a bad thing but just not what I had expected. You do have the freedom to be a good/honourable person or a wretched scoundrel (a distinction reduced to an 'honour bar' which changes whenever you do something honourable or despicable), but that's pretty much it for role playing. The following is probably nitpicking but I was quite bothered by them:

- The combat is way too easy for keyboard and mouse, even without the use of the dead eye mechanism. No sense of challenge at all. Give me a cover and ample ammo and I can take out probably a hundred lawmen at ease.
- Aggression system is often broken. You bump into someone unintentionally, and he starts shooting you, and the lawman all shoot at you as well as if you are the provoker. Not all the time, but often enough to be annoying.

- There's too much money. The whole gang is crying for a lack of money to start a new life while I have thousands of cash which I don't even know how to spend. I didn't even try but I'd imagine it'd be quite easy to amass tens of thousands of dollars in game. This really takes me out the main story which is anchored around the gang's 'desperate' effort to get more and more money.
- The music, when it exists, is superb, but there is just too little of it. I'd like to have more background music playing.

- I don't know why they implemented this but every time you reload your save you are not at the location where you saved the game, but magically teleported somewhere nearby.
- Too much handholding, sometimes just annoying. Like for certain missions, the game forces you to use certain guns (by switching it into your inventory without your consent), while you have a another gun in your mind that you want to use.

- Mission structure can feel a bit monotonous and repetitive sometimes. The heist missions in particular. And the reward is just not worth it, because, just like what I said above, you often find yourself in possession of much more money than you know what to spend it on.

This might sound like a critique of RDR2, but it's actually a very good game, but just not quite there, for me personally, in the top level.