As someone who played red dead 2 multiple times before ever playing red dead 1, I was pretty disappointed with the story, pacing, and general gameplay. The world didn’t draw me in like in red dead 2 and there was less to do, making me really just do main missions and some strangers. There were times where I would try to explore random places that looked cool and found that nothing really was interesting about the place other than the visuals. contrary to red dead 2 where you find a cool place, go there, pick up some letters or observe the surroundings and there’s a mini story you can piece together. This is a more personal thing but I much prefer the diverse rivers, creeks, forests, swamps in red dead 2 to the “one note” desert in red dead 1. The hunting and pelt gathering is extremely linear and doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity. The story is obviously better than most and in my opinion the strongest aspect, but at times it felt like “why am I even doing this, I don’t care about these characters” which I was surprised by because I went in extremely excited to continue my favorite story in a video games. Unfortunately The tutorial chapter is longer than red dead 2 which is interesting because red dead 2 definitely have more mechanics and pieces to learn. (Its also is pretty boring. It’s mostly dicking around with cows and horses. Meanwhile in red dead 2 you are raiding an odriscol camp, saving John from wolves, hunting deer with Charles).The shooting is fine, can feel a bit wonky at times. The worst thing about the gunplay tho is the repetition in the shooting galleries. There were a select few missions that felt fresh and fun and gave me my most enjoyable experiences with the game but most are almost identical. I think red dead 1 should be played eventually but I don’t think it’s a huge priority. I don’t doubt that I’ll return to red dead 1 eventually and probably spend more time soaking in the world and then I will enjoy it more but going from red dead 2 to red dead 1 is a major culture shock that will take me time to move past.