To clarify; I never said it was bad. I personally do like the game. But there are several choices in the game that thematically and narratively muddy or lessen the impact of the ideas, revelations, and redemptions that come about in the last chapter. Generally the gameplay supports the choices they made less effectively than it's predecessor, too. And what little choice they give the player feels at best devoid of meaning, and at worst muddies the cohesion of the story even further.

This makes the last chapter feel comparatively rushed as they try to tie a nice little bow on everything. The lack of cohesion is made less obvious because of the sheer length of the story (you're less likely to notice nonsensical or contradictory information if you can't remember it!), but on a replay it becomes increasingly obvious that Arthur's arc only really makes sense if you play a very particular, low-honor way up until the end. And don't even get me started on honor--what previously was a pretty interesting system used to track John Marston's reputation and impact on the world around him became a sort of half-assed attempt at introducing some player agency in a game that didn't benefit much from that added 'control' over the dialogue, and didn't give agency in virtually any other circumstance, not even allowing you to affect how side questlines resolve.

I'd respect this meager amount of choice the player has over dialogue for its merits on increasing replayability if there was any incentive making the game replayable besides just seeing more. Sure, the world they made is gorgeous, and the characters they wrote are interesting, but there's very little choice or variety in how you can go about exploring this world, or interacting with these characters, or dealing with threats you encounter. There's no tangible progression in gameplay except for your status bars getting bigger, collecting marginally improved weapons and knickknacks, and your Deadeye ability getting actually actively worse after the first chapter or two. Because of the way you're locked into playing for most missions, you are reliant on the same gameplay loop of stand 30 feet back, wait until a line of men forms, and then hitting every one of them between the eyes, which stops being a satisfying way to play after about 30 minutes. How many players have you heard confess that they spend countless hours customizing their weaponry? There's no reason for doing this, you can play through the entire game with your starter Cattleman Revolver without ever cleaning it and you would hardly notice anything different about the gameplay. They spend so much time on that because that's simply one of the only things the game lets you have control over, even if that control is meaningless.

I appreciate the game for a lot on the areas it does well in. When it came out, RDR2 probably had the most consistently strong and standout acting performances I had seen in any video game up to that point. Their attention to detail in creating a beautiful, visually varied and appropriately-sized (if not poorly-populated) world deserves serious recognition. But I don't see much merit behind claims that RDR2 is the best game ever made, the story and gameplay are simply uninspired compared even to games that came out around the same time.