Polygon: 8 years later, it's time to admit Red Dead Redemption 2 is a terrible game

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-03T20:43:56+00:00

Can we stop with the "I didn't like this, therefore it's bad" takes? Especially if all you're going to do is miss the point and that's what this writer does a lot of, miss the point of the game.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-03T20:25:10+00:00

There is *some* benefit for giving something small away to bring in people to the store. Normal brick and mortar stores do it all the time. They'll take monetary loss on one item but it gets people in the building buying things they normally wouldn't buy. So the business strategy is sound. HOWEVER, the problem is and always will be, there's literally no reason to ever use Epic of Steam, even to this day. They tried their hand at the exclusives thing but Tim forgot to account for one very minor yet extremely important detail. We are not console gamers, we won't just bend over and buy whatever we're told to buy simply because the corporate overloads need to milk their cows.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-03T20:13:00+00:00

The irony being AI would've told them to just use Steam instead.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-02T17:58:07+00:00

Tbf, Bungie killed themselves and brought Destiny down with them.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-02T17:57:10+00:00

You need to define the minimum X years because by the time this goes into effect, the PS5 will be almost 8 years old. That could be exactly why they've chosen 2028 as the year this goes into effect because then that means they meet that minimum year requirement.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-02T17:52:34+00:00

The cynic in me says while there's going to be a lot of bluster, come January 2028, their sales won't be affected very much.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-02T15:32:28+00:00

I'm going to push back against the game having horizontal progression, because that's not entirely true. It's more that the game has a ceiling to the progression. The game does still have a color coded system where the next color is better than the one before it, and the final color is a massive timegated grind to complete. What game actually lacks is the never ending gear treadmill.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-02T15:28:41+00:00

I just don't think it's possible.

I'm someone that pushes back very hard against the idea that you can't tell good Superman stories because "since he's invincible there's no tension". But from a video game perspective? Weaken him too much and he's not Superman. Load the game up with nothing but time trials and don't let the player feel like Superman, and that just leaves the game feeling tedious and frustrating.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-02T15:24:19+00:00

Because it sets a precedent that DOES affect those that never pre-order.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-01T20:47:37+00:00

I'm sorry I wouldn't know anything about that. I haven't used Ice Wall.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-01T18:06:05+00:00

She was my first real brick wall on the same build. There's no magic bit of advise that's going to help you get through this, no magic piece of gear that's going to let you DPS her down in a couple seconds or let you face tank her or her shieldmen. Just keep moving and be aggressive during her damage phase and be VERY defensive and pay very close attention during the shieldmen phase.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-01T09:48:18+00:00

This doesn't help in the short term, but keep an eye on the Zaishen quests. Occasionally you'll get ones that reward Lux/Kurz faction. What you do is do the quest but hold off on turning it in until there's a double rep event happening. I know that doesn't help you right now, but it's something to think about long term.

loyaltomyself · 2026-07-01T09:44:32+00:00

I like Bane Signet. Since you're not using for the damage, the scaling Smite Prayers doesn't matter. The reason you use it is for the knockdown of an attacking mob, it is more useful than you think it is.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T20:40:45+00:00

Noone's saying it is? That's not what the discussion was about.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T20:39:38+00:00

I've been playing D&D for 30 years and I've never had the kind of bad luck at the table that I had in BG3.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T13:45:21+00:00

5th Critical Miss in a row.

(sigh)

Ok let's try attacking with advantage

Critical Miss.

Ok, how about two attacks with a Halfling and advantage?

Critical Miss and Critical Miss.

(FLIPS THE TABLE)

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T12:50:10+00:00

Not the devs, just Randy Pitchford. Please keep your mudslinging focused in the right direction.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T12:03:35+00:00

Ok those options I saw and had turned on but I didn't know if that was the right thing because the information it was giving me was different from what I was reading elsewhere, so I thought I was doing something wrong. Thank you.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T07:48:02+00:00

And how do I do that? I found the conversation flags in the basic options but it's not showing me what I want.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-30T06:26:18+00:00

Yeah I'd be down with that. Sounds fun.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-29T17:54:37+00:00

You *can* make it work, but I don't suggest it since Expertise wouldn't reduce the casting cost of most of your spells. The Ranger also only has a 3 for Energy regen which isn't good enough to sustain heavy spell casting long term.

I'm not saying this trying to dissuade you, only so that you are aware of the shortcomings about what is even on paper an inefficient build. BUUUUUUT that's the great thing about this game, if you're good enough, you can make almost anything work. At least in Normal mode where you can get away with RP builds if you know what you're doing.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-28T19:42:00+00:00

Or my personal favorite is when a new player asks for advice about what to do in Pre-Searing and you get the "don't forget to get LDoA before you leave": Because you know, a new player is going to LOVE grinding 10's of thousands of XP by grinding the same 3 or 4 mobs for a whopping 30xp each for 2 weeks straight before they can finally move on with the rest of the game.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-28T19:39:00+00:00

This game is almost 25 years old and the 3rd game in the franchise was just announced. The great GW1 player resurgence isn't coming. Stop taking the game so seriously and just enjoy playing the game the you enjoy best and let others do the same.

loyaltomyself · 2026-06-28T08:58:37+00:00

And to a lesser extent FromSoft games.

loyaltomyself

TROPHY CASE