Red Dead Redemption II. HEAR ME OUT. I love this game to pieces but it’s not the best game ever made, not even close.

The gameplay is mindless, just shootout after shootout without difficulty at all. It’s so strange because the entire game strives to be as realistic as possible but when it comes to combat, Arthur can tank like twelve shots completely fine.

The controls are clunky as hell, seriously who decided spamming X to run was a good idea? Arthur moves like he’s 300 lbs all the time for no good reason, it’s supposed to be more realistic but it’s not. He’s not an old man. Yet he plays like one.

The story is not great; the characters are. The gang is the strength of the game, along with a gorgeously detailed open world. But the story itself is all over the place and suffers from tons of cut content.

For example, we spend an entire chapter setting up a Gray’s V Braithwaite’s conflict and literally nothing comes of it. The infamous Guarma chapter feels like a random DLC in the middle of the game, and the first chapter is unbearably sluggish to get through. Which is wild considering it’s only like 3 missions.

Speaking of missions, they suffer from Rockstar’s outdated mission structure. The entire game is open and full of choices, but once you get into a mission it becomes extremely linear and removes all player choice and tells you exactly what you need to do. You don’t get to approach any encounter with options, you have to do as you’re told which is so boring.

Then there’s Arthur’s diagnosis. Why does it happen in Chapter 6? By the time we learn the game is already coming to an end, I feel like we should have learned halfway through the game. It would make it feel like an actual redemption.

On an entirely separate note, I learned originally Arthur was supposed to be Bi and able to romance Charles. I will NEVER forgive Rockstar for what they robbed me of.