By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - What do you think of RDR2 so far? (for those who are playing it)

I'm extraordinarily disappointed in myself. The first day it was out I got in a good 6-7 hours which was a lot considering I did not even like most of my play time. The 2nd day I decided to restart the game (it's a really bad habit that I do for almost every game for some reason). Got about 4 hours in. Then yesterday I didn't even play at all.

Hitman 2016 is sucking up my Red Dead time. Now THAT'S a game that doesn't waste the players time.



Around the Network
John2290 said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

And that's not a good thing. Lol. 

It is if you are into big beautiful, spectacle type games that are paced properly. People are speaking negatively too soon as is usual with big releases on these forums.  If you were to take the first 5 hours of The Witcher 3 you'd come away with a pretty shit view of the game, after ten or fifteen hours your opinion will change and add a few more hours to that and it becomes the second coming of Christ in video game form. For me at least, the same thing is happening here, everything is coming together like fine brandy even the systems I thought were shit the first few hours make much more since now and work fantastically to keep engagement. The story though, even though I know pretty much the middle and end from playing RDR1, it's still surprising the hell out of me and it's as cinematic as a Sony first party game and as well written as a HBO flagship show. Apparently, I have another 40 hours of story and half that again in side content ahead of me. Not as big as The witcher but the pacing is just as solid if not better story wise. 

There is a reason reviewers are expected to play the game through fully before evaluating the game fully. ;)

@ the bolded I can't speak for anyone else but Witcher 3 grabbed me from the beginning and didn't have near the boring moments to start out like red dead 2  does tho I am still enjoying it. Witcher 3 also didn't treat you like an idiot with all the damn tutorials. Don't get me wrong I like rRDR2 but Witcher 3 I immediately thought this was one of the best game I played early on. I'm not getting that feeling from RDR 2



Baddman said:
John2290 said:

It is if you are into big beautiful, spectacle type games that are paced properly. People are speaking negatively too soon as is usual with big releases on these forums.  If you were to take the first 5 hours of The Witcher 3 you'd come away with a pretty shit view of the game, after ten or fifteen hours your opinion will change and add a few more hours to that and it becomes the second coming of Christ in video game form. For me at least, the same thing is happening here, everything is coming together like fine brandy even the systems I thought were shit the first few hours make much more since now and work fantastically to keep engagement. The story though, even though I know pretty much the middle and end from playing RDR1, it's still surprising the hell out of me and it's as cinematic as a Sony first party game and as well written as a HBO flagship show. Apparently, I have another 40 hours of story and half that again in side content ahead of me. Not as big as The witcher but the pacing is just as solid if not better story wise. 

There is a reason reviewers are expected to play the game through fully before evaluating the game fully. ;)

@ the bolded I can't speak for anyone else but Witcher 3 grabbed me from the beginning and didn't have near the boring moments to start out like red dead 2  does tho I am still enjoying it. Witcher 3 also didn't treat you like an idiot with all the damn tutorials. Don't get me wrong I like rRDR2 but Witcher 3 I immediately thought this was one of the best game I played early on. I'm not getting that feeling from RDR 2

I'm 20 hours in, if your view of gameplay in terms of how clunky it feels, and how gunplay is and how awfully controller has been mapped, it actually only gets worse when they introduce a bit of stealth. I am loving the world, but I to share your complaints on gunplay, and your various nitpicks in terms of how you access things and do things. 



 

shikamaru317 said:
TallSilhouette said:

So poker is feeling pretty sketchy right now. Two hours in and I still can't clear the table. Every single pocket pair I've drawn has been 8's, no exception...

EDIT: Finally drew something different. Still feels wonky, though.

Yeah, I really miss the outfit from RDR1 that allowed you to cheat at poker. 

I ended up getting the hang of it, more or less. The RNG was still being a bastard, but you can buy pots with even the smallest raises and the AI is vulnerable to big bets on the river regardless of the current pot so long as you don't make them go all in. I guess I was just overthinking it and treating the NPC's too much like human opponents.



John2290 said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

And that's not a good thing. Lol. 

It is if you are into big beautiful, spectacle type games that are paced properly. People are speaking negatively too soon as is usual with big releases on these forums.  If you were to take the first 5 hours of The Witcher 3 you'd come away with a pretty shit view of the game, after ten or fifteen hours your opinion will change and add a few more hours to that and it becomes the second coming of Christ in video game form. For me at least, the same thing is happening here, everything is coming together like fine brandy even the systems I thought were shit the first few hours make much more since now and work fantastically to keep engagement. The story though, even though I know pretty much the middle and end from playing RDR1, it's still surprising the hell out of me and it's as cinematic as a Sony first party game and as well written as a HBO flagship show. Apparently, I have another 40 hours of story and half that again in side content ahead of me. Not as big as The witcher but the pacing is just as solid if not better story wise. 

There is a reason reviewers are expected to play the game through fully before evaluating the game fully. ;)

Wow, that is a big load of bullshit right there. My comment said nothing about being able to judge a game without playing it all the way through. My comment said that having tutorials 15 hours in isn't good. No one was praising Xenoblade 2's need for tutorial 20 hours into the game because it was a " big beautiful, spectacle type games that was paced properly", because guess what? Having tutorials hours into a game is incredibly annoying. The game already took too long to start (with a 3 hour intro that would ruin any replays), and hearing that you still don't know how to play the game in it's entirety 15 hours in is more of an annoyance than anything. Your point about reviewers not only doesn't connect to my comment in any way, but it doesn't even make sense in relation to consumers. You do realize that consumers do not have to play an entire game to judge it, and in fact developers know this ... right? That's why most games start with a strong opening. I have no idea what you mean with The Witcher 3, either. That game was pretty immediately engrossing. 

In essence, it almost seems like you were responding to an entirely different comment. 



Around the Network
TallSilhouette said:
shikamaru317 said:

Yeah, I really miss the outfit from RDR1 that allowed you to cheat at poker. 

I ended up getting the hang of it, more or less. The RNG was still being a bastard, but you can buy pots with even the smallest raises and the AI is vulnerable to big bets on the river regardless of the current pot so long as you don't make them go all in. I guess I was just overthinking it and treating the NPC's too much like human opponents.

Oh I learned very early on, I can make NPC go all in even with crappy cards without a single draw. It was funny when you basically have a huge amount already. 



 

The game managed to piss me off greatly today. I lost over an hour of game play and had to do the most restrictive story mission 3 times.

I did another side mission first then headed to Valentine to check something out and by the time night fell I set out to the next story mission. I had it on auto pilot in cinematic mode to enjoy the moonlit vistas. And of course out of nowhere a gang spawns to shoot me up. Scrambling to get control back with the horse wildly turning from switching back to a different view it was too late, dead. Whatever, respawn, little money lost, still dark, I get on my horse and continue. Happens way too often. (Btw why won't the horse keep running when you turn around to shoot at pursuers, so frigging annoying he comes to a stop every time)

Anyway I go through the mission, however my character decides to hump a chest instead of opening it and a timer I was not aware off runs out and it moves on without me actually being able to loot anything... Not allowed to go back either after dealing with the interruption so I restart the mission to try again. Big mistake, it doesn't matter anyway, plus the clunky controls screw up even worse this time. I try to take up a defensive position to at least have a chance to loot the bodies, not allowed, my stupid gang members just stand around waiting to get shot. I try to set the thing I'm robbing in motion to get away that way, not allowed.

Oh well, stick to the script by the inch. Mission ends, I get a little bit of money and a bounty on my head for the trouble. So I head back to Valentine to pay off the bounty when I get the message my horse bond has increased. I wonder wth it's been maxed for a long time, look at my horse, it's not my horse. Where is my horse. What is this slow piece of crap. Oh well, perhaps my horse is at the stable. Pay off bounty first.

I get to Valentine, pay off my bounty then trot too close to a fence on the way to the stable when my horse decides to sort of slide along then jump over right where a person is standing. Witness assault, crime reported, Bounty on my head. FFS. Reload auto save, run to Valentine again, pay bounty again, get to stable. Nope no horse there. It's gone, must have died in that skirmish at the start and replaced by a brown horse. Impossible to spot the difference between black grey spotted and brown.

There is only one auto save so my only option is to reload where I started today. Do the side mission again etc etc. I get attacked again in the same place otw to the story mission (I guess it's not so random...) Fight them off, then get "witness animal cruelty" flashing on screen. I run down and kill the 'witness' and continue to the story mission.

I don't feel like doing it a third time so instead I get creative and figure out the fastest way to fail each section to use skip to next checkpoint. Just standing still will certainly fail it at some point, takes too long. Shooting the npc the script wants to interact with works pretty fast, interfering fail. Running away doesn't take long, abandoned fail. Fastest is simply throwing a molotov cocktail next to a gang member or one of their horses, instant fail. Skip skip skip good riddance. End result, slightly lower take and higher bounty for not participating. The gang still got the same haul anyway.

It's a shame it's more fun sabotaging the story missions than playing them. No freedom at all, might as well be a qte sequence or extended cut scene. Literally one part of the mission is pressing forward for 2 seconds to trigger the next cut scene.

Oh and this is what I did with the imposter horse :)


Deep breath, back to enjoying the game later. Hopefully the next mission goes better as I want to unlock the next part of the map to explore more. That's where the real fun is.



John2290 said:

How about finishing a game before rating a game or at least get more than 10 percent onto it. :P

Well, first of all, i did not rate the game, i only said the game is still good despite its flaws and perfectly has a chance for me to being a 9 in the end. Second, despite most people not liking the first chapter, in my case I did. I'm a sucker for games that put good presentation and cinematic values first. I'm the kind of person that don't value "gameplay" as necessary for a game to be considered great. I will always prefer a game like Journey more than a Super Mario, or The Witcher III more than Zelda Breath of the Wild. But when a person like me still feels the gameplay affects the joy of the game, despite all the other strenghts, there's a problem. And talking about The Witcher III, you made a comparison with the beginning of that game and RDR2. In the prologue of the Witcher III, you already do all the things you're going to do in the rest of the game, so if you like or don't like that part you'll get a good impresion for the the rest of the game. In the Witcher III you notice early on in the game the average or mediocre combat too. The clunky gameplay was reflected as a criticism in the reviews back then. With RDR 2 it's the same, in chapter 2 the game opens and it's where the open nature of the game clashes with some game design choices and you start noticing how badly the gunplay works, but only this time no reviews stated those things because coming from a Rockstar game those are taken from granted, and it's not fair.

I can't guarantee nothing, because i did not finished the game yet obviously, but i'm sure the things i don't like will still be there 10, 20 or 30 hours later. Those problems are an important part of the game and that's why i'm calling the game "overrated" because a 97 rating mean it's something historical, a true revolution or evolution for a genre or saga and I don't feel RDR 2 that way. But that doesn't mean that is a bad game either...., just not as unanimously good as the press says. I only demand from the press the same criteria and criticism that they have with other games. My original post was more a rant against the press than against the game itself.



John2290 said:

I can only speak for myself but much of the things I disliked at the start of the game ironed out and by the start of chapter 3 and much of the systems along with the gunplay and horse riding have become much more enjoyable. There are still issues, the wanted system for one is near broken still but 70 percent of the stuff works out or gets better. I believe it to be a stat issue, where they have kee capped players at the start so they can level up over time, they just took it way to far at the start of the game, that and the weapons pre chapter 3 are fucking horrible, anything that says it's 'worn'... well, you might as well throw it away and just throwing knife people to death. Dead eye also opens up into a fantastic mechanic. I'm not defending the game design, I think it's shit how they implemented things over the first few hours but it does get much, much better in every aspect, just with a few flaws and questionable design decisions following through. 

Ok, you played more, so you have more insight than me on the game and i'm willing to accept that the game can be better later on, but my point still remains. Is RDR 2 with all of these design shortcomings (broken wanted system, gunplay only becoming good thanks to dead eye system later on, oversatured microgestion of the inventory, ...) still a 97 rating game??, when most other games get penalized for their own shortcomings?? 

I'm tired of certain games receiving 95+ grades just because name alone. GTA IV was a similar feeling back in 2008. A wonderful cinematic experience in an open world game at the time, but lacking in the gameplay department. That game never ended in any top 10 lists of best games of PS3 or X360. Or like Super Mario Odyssey, receiving a 97 rating and 2 months later only being number 3 in GOTY's winner lists surpassed by a game that received "only" 89 on metacritic like Horizon Zero Dawn....How a game can change so much in perception in just 2 months? How much of those "journalists" that review those games are just average people receiving more attetion than they deserve or just fans of the franchise that they will give a 10 just because the game was not bad and being caught in the hype at the launch?

There are games the press are more biased to give easily a 10 than with other games and that is unprofessional and unfair. 



John2290 said:

I can only speak for myself but much of the things I disliked at the start of the game ironed out and by the start of chapter 3 and much of the systems along with the gunplay and horse riding have become much more enjoyable. There are still issues, the wanted system for one is near broken still but 70 percent of the stuff works out or gets better. I believe it to be a stat issue, where they have kee capped players at the start so they can level up over time, they just took it way to far at the start of the game, that and the weapons pre chapter 3 are fucking horrible, anything that says it's 'worn'... well, you might as well throw it away and just throwing knife people to death. Dead eye also opens up into a fantastic mechanic. I'm not defending the game design, I think it's shit how they implemented things over the first few hours but it does get much, much better in every aspect, just with a few flaws and questionable design decisions following through. 

I'm at 37% completion, although only 22% story according to the progress stats. I've explored every inch of the map except for the death squad region and that appendix that is beyond. Upgraded the camp to max, did all side missions as they unlocked, yet I'm struggling to find fun in the story missions atm.

I just did the one that involved sheep. You probably know it. I tried to use dead eye to disarm the attackers, seemed plausible enough. Yet no matter how many times I restarted the check point, even with 5 bullets in his arm and legs, the guy still happily stabs his hostage as if nothing happened. Thou shalt commit murder to move on. Why even give the player the option or lead him to believe disarming is a possibility as used in previous missions. Just make it a cut scene if the outcome is set in stone. Then the most ridiculous 'escape' scene follows. Umm guys, it's the other way, he guys, hello, anyone. The mission design just irritates me now. Instead I blew up my idiot gang members and pressed skip then payed of my fine at the post office, done.

For once I would like an open world game where I look forward to the next story mission, this isn't it. Just dreading what I have to do next to unlock more of the map. Hopefully I'm almost done the tutorial now after 30 hours :)

As for weapons, I still use the carabine repeater I had since the start as the game always defaults to that again after I use something else. Running backwards and strafing while auto aiming usually does the job. The highlight of the missions is the ride to and back! The best mission so far is when you receive the letter, they are certainly not all bad.

I'm gonna rob a train next in a remote area, kill everyone to leave no witnesses, so I'll have some spare money in case I accidentally bump into someone in town and need to pay for assault or murder :)