I feel so guilty about this game. My son bought it for me for my birthday. I really want to enjoy it. It’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve seen, with moments that are absolutely wonderful.
And it is so…fucking…boring. I find this article (https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/22/18298277/red-dead-redemption-2-review-rdr2-story-design-criticism) hilarious, because it manages to convey how boring Red Dead Redemption 2 is, while doing the exact same thing that contributes to Red Dead Redemption 2 being so boring (burying the point in the article inside about five billion meandering, masturbatory words trying to show how smart he is).
I hate games like this, where the game cost a lot of money to buy (in this case, a loved one), and the game has some redeeming factors, but is fundamentally fairly unfun. So many things are just buried behind pointless complexity. Crafting is a fucking nightmare. You want to catch legendary fish? Oh, you need to run across some random dude on the map somewhere who then lets you buy special lures, even though this is pointed out nowhere. Want to do a mission? Have fun riding for five minutes, the thousandth time, through a country-side that was beautiful but has now just grown into a similarly irritating version of your morning commute to work.
Gah!