Red Read Redeemertion 2 reviews are out

[CaitSeith]

Spoiler: Oh, B-Cell started the 'overrated' argument again?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Having played it for something like 20 hours now, I can conclusively say that it is an infuriating game in many ways. When it is good, it is really oh-my-God great and an absolute joy to play. When it isn't, it is 'controller meet TV-screen'-rage inducing.

Anecdotally: I was trying to get me some fine rugs for people to sit on by the campfire (don't want people catching them UTI's before antibiotics get invented in 40 or so years) and needed to get me some Perfect pronghorn skins, skins being graded on a scale of perfect-good-poor. Once you've studied or killed an animal the game is kind enough to tell you which weapon is 'ideal' for hunting the animal, that is, the gun you must use to not degrade the skin. So I go on a pronghorn killing spree. I depopulate the vast plains of pronghorn, but no matter how careful I aim, no matter how perfectly I line up head shots with the proper weapon, do I get perfect skin. Frustrated, I google to see if there's some vital information I am missing, maybe I need special ammo or need to aim in some specific place or whatever, anything that apparently isn't covered by the in-game help section. Turns out that each animal gets assigned a skin value when they spawn and you can see this in the lower right corner, ranging from one star (poor) to three stars (perfect). Using the proper weapon and only firing one shot guarantees that the skin doesn't degrade. So what I was missing was information that the game doesn't bother to tell you, namely that most animals in the game won't be giving out perfect skins and that some animals will always hand out poor, no matter how delicately you kill them.

More anecdote: I broke in a wild horse pretty early on in my adventures. A really sweet looking black horse with nominally better stats then my current horse. I read the in-game tutorial and it instructs me on how to move my saddle to a new horse. I try do it. Prompt doesn't show up and the game doesn't allow me to do it. Frustrated I leave the horse in camp and decide to just ignore it. Three hours later I decide to do a story mission, which introduces the mechanic. Why the game didn't just tell me that the mechanic was locked is beyond me. Incidentally, this is a recurring theme in the game, of me reading about something in the in-game tutorials and wanting to do it, only to realize I can't and having to try to guess if any of my current story missions will unlock that feature or if I have to push through them until I can. Bonus points for the game handing out challenges that asks you to use mechanics that you haven't unlocked yet.

 

[Baffle]

snip

Have you tried lassoing them instead? I seem to get a decent number of great skins, and I do a lot of lassoing.

I have a hell of a job keeping the same horse. I bought one, paid good money for it to have its tail braided, and I haven't the faintest idea where it is now. I just get on whichever horse is nearby that'll let me ride it now.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Have you tried lassoing them instead? I seem to get a decent number of great skins, and I do a lot of lassoing.

As I said, I've worked it out now and the only input the player has is if they use the right weapon or not. The actual quality of the skin is capped based on the animal, so if you want to get 3 perfect rabbit pelts, as per the challenge, you just need to keep looking out for 3 star rabbits. The sheer number of rabbits I killed before I realized that...

 

[Casual Shinji]

Have you tried lassoing them instead? I seem to get a decent number of great skins, and I do a lot of lassoing.

As I said, I've worked it out now and the only input the player has is if they use the right weapon or not. The actual quality of the skin is capped based on the animal, so if you want to get 3 perfect rabbit pelts, as per the challenge, you just need to keep looking out for 3 star rabbits. The sheer number of rabbits I killed before I realized that...

Using your binoculars also helps a great deal. I'll be damned if I'm going to follow tracks around. Every once in a while I just pull out the binoculars and see if I can spot any animal with three stars.

I have a hell of a job keeping the same horse. I bought one, paid good money for it to have its tail braided, and I haven't the faintest idea where it is now. I just get on whichever horse is nearby that'll let me ride it now.

Can't say I've had any trouble with that. Even on missions that require me to drive a cart I just whistle and it'll follow me around. At one point I was riding a horse with two other previously saddled horse following along.

Speaking of horses, I activate the cinematic mode pretty much all the time now when riding to an objective marker. I remember horse riding being dreadfully dull in RDR1, and it's the same in the sequel. Cinematic mode not only auto-pilots your horse near perfectly, it also makes those journeys more visually interesting.


Another annoyance I discovered is that apart from constantly unequipping your long guns, the game also reverts your ammo back to default if you have specialized ammo loaded up. There are stronger bullets for every gun, so obviously I want to use those all the time, but whenever I've slept or a cutscene ends I suddenly find myself with default rounds. This is particularly irritating with the later, since many cutscenes end with you in a hectic fire fight. Also, because apparently you can't sell your guns, I find myself having to scroll through five weapons evertime I want to equip my favorite one.


Maybe they'll patch some of this shit out. I hope so.

 

[Avnger]

Have you tried lassoing them instead? I seem to get a decent number of great skins, and I do a lot of lassoing.

As I said, I've worked it out now and the only input the player has is if they use the right weapon or not. The actual quality of the skin is capped based on the animal, so if you want to get 3 perfect rabbit pelts, as per the challenge, you just need to keep looking out for 3 star rabbits. The sheer number of rabbits I killed before I realized that...

So I noticed that the suggested weapon isn't necessarily the only weapon that works to keep the skin's rating. For example, the wolf entry says to use poisoned arrows, but I was able to headshot a wolf with the bolt-action rifle and not lose its pristine rating. I also 1-shot headshot a bison using a slug shotgun round and kept its pristine rating despite the entry saying to use rifles.

It seems to be that any 1-shot headshot regardless of the weapon (except non-slug shotguns) will keep the rating for anything that doesn't say to use a varmint rifle or small-animal arrow. If it says to use a small-animal arrow, you must use that, and if it says to use a varmint rifle, you must use either that or a small-animal arrow (as long as its a 1-shot kill).

 

[Avnger]

I bought one, paid good money for it to have its tail braided, and I haven't the faintest idea where it is now. I just get on whichever horse is nearby that'll let me ride it now.

Go to a stable and use the "managed stabled horses" option. You should find it there. If its not, the other way I can think of is that there's an upgrade for the camp that lets you summon your "main" horse to camp regardless of where it currently resides in the world. Try purchasing and using that to reset its position to camp.

 

[Catfood220]

Ok, so I was a bit quick to judge this game in my post above. I agree with Gethsemani, this game, when it is good its so good, but there are decisions that baffle me. I spent most of the weekend playing the game and it only dawned on me after much longer than is embarrassing for me to admit, the reason I can rapid fire is because between each shot, I have to cock the gun. This is super realistic, but totally unnecessary. Why can't this game, like every single game in the world with guns in it, automatically cock the gun for you after each shot. I was sat there behind cover wondering why I couldn't shoot some mook straight I had shot his mate even though I was aiming at him, its because my second press of the shoot button cocks the weapon. That took a while for me to work out.

Oh and can someone bring me the head of the person who decided that the talk button should be the same button that aims your weapon. A tale for you, I was riding about the plains on my way to a mission when I hear a woman shouting for help, being the gentleman that I mostly am, I find a woman locked in a prison wagon being taken into justice. I try to talk to the lawmen, they decide to open fire, I decide that the woman is innocent and kill the lawmen and shoot the lock of the wagon and the grateful woman climbs out. I go to talk to her, forgetting that I have a weapon in my hand, she freaks out and runs away, depriving me of whatever reward she was going to give me. This is a repeating theme, I am in town, go to talk to someone and pull a weapon on them, then the law gets involved and my bounty goes up.

Though to be fair, I don't know why anyone would expect anything different from someone who wears a severed bear head as a hat.

I've had a lot of fun with this game so far, I did a duel with a former gunslinger and after I'd killed him and stolen his gun. I killed and skinned his pigs for making me clear up their shit. Never piss off a guy wearing a severed bear head as a hat. But I also think that the majority of the stories coming from people struggling with game mechanics rather than anything else.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The more I see of RDR2 the less interested I am of it. I never see anyone playing anything fun. Mostly just random wilderness looking for animals, or falling form their horse, or whatever. Nothing about the game looks fun, the over emphasis on detail seems to get in the way of the gameplay imo. The sheer slowness of the game would drive me crazy as someone who doesn't have a lot of game time per week. I'd feel like it was wasting time for no reason.

 

[Baffle]

As I said, I've worked it out now and the only input the player has is if they use the right weapon or not. The actual quality of the skin is capped based on the animal, so if you want to get 3 perfect rabbit pelts, as per the challenge, you just need to keep looking out for 3 star rabbits. The sheer number of rabbits I killed before I realized that...

Ah, I didn't realise you were hunting rabbits. You'd look ridiculous lassoing rabbits.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Watched Jim's video. Seems like there's even more grind than in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and twice as many steps to get what you need. Instead of just shooting a goat and getting meat and skin and horns, you have to carefully target specific parts because if you hit the got too much you loose meat and skin. Also it has to be a healthy goat. Also the goat should ideally be named Billy and have at least 2 years of college, and it wouldn't hurt if you two took a 6 week, real time, salsa dancing course. I mean how do you expect Billy's meat to be tender enough without weeks worth of dance lessons?!
and don't even get me started if your horse wanders off and you can't call it back because your whistle has a limited range.

Just seems like its everything Odyssey gets accused of but with cowboy hats. And I don't know what's worse, that Ass Creed put in x2 as much grind with the ability to bypass with micotransactions, or Red Dead put in x4 as much grind and didn't and just expect you to spend 30 real minutes slowly walking back to town with Billy over your shoulders because the horse walked away. I mean what's worse, a game that lets you skip 10mins of grind for money or a game that doesn't let you skip 40mins of grind?

Sounds like it's going down the same road GTA San Andreas did with making the game TOO realistic to the point that doing things is a chore rather than fun.

 

[Foxcubwendigo]

I personally really like it.
Sure, there are some things I'd change, like the limited whistle range for horses and how hard it is to fast travel, but I'm really enjoying the game.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I take it there?re no ?realism? sliders or toggle options? Sounds like a lot of the gripes I?m reading about could be resolved with the ability to turn them off. Unfortunately, it also sounds like these realistic details are gameplay affecting, so the option to turn them off could drastically unbalance the game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I take it there?re no ?realism? sliders or toggle options? Sounds like a lot of the gripes I?m reading about could be resolved with the ability to turn them off. Unfortunately, it also sounds like these realistic details are gameplay affecting, so the option to turn them off could drastically unbalance the game.

There's a couple of things that could easily be patched to make the game less cumbersome.


1) Patch out Arthur auto-hostering his long guns when riding a horse. When I've choosen two long guns in their appointed slots I want to keep them on me, not have the game decide to store them away in the saddle.
2) Allow me to get rid of guns I don't want anymore. Now they just clog up my weapons bar whenever I need to scroll to the one I want to use in the middle of a firefight.
3) Fix the free-aim. It's worse than it was in GTA5, and there it already wasn't optimum.
4) Stop reverting my rounds to default after I've choosen different ammo. Why the game sees it fit to replace my stronger rounds for the weaker default ones whenever I restart the game or when I simply went to sleep in-game is baffling to me.
5) Fix the godawful melee sections. This could be a bit more troublesome though since I fear this has to do with the animations. But the reaction time is so sluggish and you get knocked out of punch and grab wind-ups constantly.

 

[Baffle]

I would prefer a more streamlined eating system (maybe some sort of tobacco, booze and fried meat drip), but I am overall very much enjoying this.

 

[Xprimentyl]

This game is sounding more and more like a wild west life simulator; any comments on the story? Pacing? With all the tedium, is it a slog? With the Rockstar?s mission/side mission structure that allows you to do what you want when you want, I?d imagine all the ?realism padding,? doing all the maintenance and living, could serve to sap some of the fun out of the in-between ?fuck off? sessions. Or, conversely, doesn?t it serve to give the ?fuck off? sessions purpose?

 

[Something Amyss]

Realistic horse balls? Well shit, that's my reason to buy a console right there!

According to bollocks expert Jim Sterling, the horse balls remain unchanged.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I take it there?re no ?realism? sliders or toggle options? Sounds like a lot of the gripes I?m reading about could be resolved with the ability to turn them off. Unfortunately, it also sounds like these realistic details are gameplay affecting, so the option to turn them off could drastically unbalance the game.

There's a couple of things that could easily be patched to make the game less cumbersome.


1) Patch out Arthur auto-hostering his long guns when riding a horse. When I've choosen two long guns in their appointed slots I want to keep them on me, not have the game decide to store them away in the saddle.
2) Allow me to get rid of guns I don't want anymore. Now they just clog up my weapons bar whenever I need to scroll to the one I want to use in the middle of a firefight.
3) Fix the free-aim. It's worse than it was in GTA5, and there it already wasn't optimum.
4) Stop reverting my rounds to default after I've choosen different ammo. Why the game sees it fit to replace my stronger rounds for the weaker default ones whenever I restart the game or when I simply went to sleep in-game is baffling to me.
5) Fix the godawful melee sections. This could be a bit more troublesome though since I fear this has to do with the animations. But the reaction time is so sluggish and you get knocked out of punch and grab wind-ups constantly.

That one is baffling in a game touting realism. What game with guns or weapons in general doesn?t have a ?Drop? option anymore.

 

[Dalisclock]

This game is sounding more and more like a wild west life simulator; any comments on the story? Pacing? With all the tedium, is it a slog? With the Rockstar?s mission/side mission structure that allows you to do what you want when you want, I?d imagine all the ?realism padding,? doing all the maintenance and living, could serve to sap some of the fun out of the in-between ?fuck off? sessions. Or, conversely, doesn?t it serve to give the ?fuck off? sessions purpose?

Good point. I've heard a lot about how "Real" it feels(setting/atmosphere) and very little on plot/characters. And while I don't need great plot/characters if the mechanics or something else is enough to keep me happy, it helps a lot if there's more to it then me just messing around in the big open sandbox.

 

[Catfood220]

I killed a dog last night. I didn't want to, I'd accidently wandered onto someone's farm and they got shooty. Not wanting to kill someone defending their land - though seriously it would be nice to go to one camp and instead of the person there wanting to kill me, there was one person who was like "welcome stranger, join us" and then you decide whether to kill them or not - I ran off away from all the flying bullets and to safety. But one of their dogs followed me, I tried to escape the dog but it wouldn't leave me alone, it was bothering my horse too.

So I took the decision to kill the dog. I thought a blast from my rifle would solve the problem, a one hit kill. I was wrong, The dog whimpered in pain and ran of a short way before laying down and whimpering in pain. I felt so bad as it lay there dying, eventually I decided to put it out of its misery.

So fuck you Rockstar, I can kill the entire population of the planet in bandits, steal all their stuff and chuck them on a campfire and watch as they burn and not feel a damn thing about these 1s and 0s. One dog murder later and I feel so guilty that I have to confess my sins on a gaming website. Well played.