Ok guys, I'm not gonna read through hundreds of pages. Here are my impressions so far.
Everything is unwieldy and cumbersome. While the game strives for realism, there's only so much you can do in a video game. In the end, it all comes down to pressing a button. And boy, do you have to press buttons for all kinds of minor things. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I can never keep track of how to do what. Hold this button to do that, press another button to do that, now press the same button to do something else, etc. etc.
There's all this stuff that you are supposed to keep track off, but that ends up feeling unnecessary and a slog (brushing your horse comes to mind).
Also, the inventory system feels way too confusing. I'm on my horse, rifle in hand. I get off the horse, my goddamn rifle is gone and I have to manually retrieve it again. Next time, I do the same thing, and I keep the rifle. I know, I know, there's a good explanation for all of this, but to me it just seems very unintuitive.
Here's an example for the weird juxtaposition between realism and game-y stuff that keeps getting in the way.
Apparently, when my horse dies, it's gone forever. I'm currently on foot running miles and miles to the next damn stable. I had been grooming that damn horse for hours and it died falling down about half a foot! That's just annoying.
What keeps me going, similar to the first game, are the story and the atmosphere.
P.S.: Why won't NPCs ever shut the hell up? All I want to do is READ a letter in peace, and they just keep babbling. Pipe down, Chatty Cathy!