It's (IMHO) still best open world in a long time for rewarding exploration. Everytime you saddle up and go out in th wilderness, you have a high probability of something wortwhile will happen.
The flaws the game does have should of course not be overlooked, but it's not like games like Far Cry and Shadow of Morder aren't without them.
I'm all for innovations in the genre to make these feel more dynamic, but in the absences of such things, RDR2 still have such large amounts of scripted content, in such a variety and quality, that the game still very much feels like a wortwhile quality addition to the genre.
For me it's such an astonishing accomplishment, and something that feels like the ultimate western games, so that a lot of the attempts to completely discredit the games feels very weird for me, based on my experiences playing the game.
I mean it is still an amazing game but I feel like just the attitude that seems to be here with how criticism is discrediting? It's something I find very sad to gaming discussion.
If the only meaningful thing we're able to say about a game that it's great I feel that is such a disservice to the medium and showcases a lack of actually taking it seriously.
The point of criticism shouldn't be a contest of which games have the most flaws or some kind of weird dick measuring contest and definitely not just to discredit something. The point of criticism at least to me is to engage with something on a deeper level and find appreciation in the way a work succeeds or fails and how especially for games the complex web of systems mesh together to create/recreate a certain experience.
When I talk about how the gameplay of the honor system and the journal in certain ways clashes with arthurs characterization that is sold through story missions that doesn't discredit that there is a lot of really great story telling going on outside of that. Things like Dutch brooding solo at certain points in the camp or John never being close to Jack in camp are great, the amount of characterization the game is doing just by showing stuff and asking the players to pay attention is great. I'm in chapter 3 and I got more out of the camp members already than I did get out of a full playthrough of FF15 from the bros. But I feel like we should be able to talk about where it doesn't succeed as well without some fragile fanboy just coming into a thread going on about some absurd reason instead of engaging with the criticism of why everyone that doesn't think it's a perfect game is wrong.
Like at least if you disagree engage well as long as it makes some sense, I'm not sure how to feel about people defending input lag as an artistic choice.
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Looking at the responses here alas not. That this thread counts as shitting on RDR2 to some is embarrassing as fuck peace out. Every game is perfect or trash I guess I'm not going to look for actual good discussion here anymore. Too many are just utterly incapable of engaging with criticism and I'm actually feeling like I'm reading a baby rage comment section. Jesus.