Playing lowend 30fps version…and streamed at that, with extra dose of latency?
I would recommend getting the native PC version. Yes it is a time commitment, my first playthrough (doing all missions) took me 150 hours.
you can download ps now (PS4) games.
Play RDR1 first, and realize you’re playing it for the story. While there were things in RDR1 that I didn’t like, such as the repetitive stranger encounters that played out the same way 99% of the time, the story and fate of the main character is pure Western-Noir and surprised me and sticks with me to this day. It’s a great story and character.
Also, it really informs and adds to RDR2 which yes, you absolutely should play. Having played RDR1 and knowing the future of these characters adds an extra dimension to the game and story, and this is also a great Western Noir story. The epilogue is that much more meaningful if you’ve played the first one, as is many of the interactions in the game.
Yeah, some of the micro mechanics in the game can be “eh” when you start playing, and you have to get really into Chapter 2 before it really opens up and you see what a masterpiece this is. But the ability to freely ride and explore a simply amazing world, at your will, wherever you want, and the almost unlimited things you will discover (after the game has been out all of this time, you see articles where people are still finding surprising discoveries) is simply amazing. I would ignore the main missions for a month of gameplay, and just ride all day, camp at night, exploring the world. The swamps at night are genuinely scary and hold some gruesome secrets. The mountains and waterfalls and rivers are beautiful, and also hold their secrets. I’ve discovered a creepy guy in a tent telling me about the woman who he knows will fall in love with him, and looked closer at his tent, and realized something about this guy, tied him up and put him on the railroad tracks as a train was coming. Simple things like the show in the theater in the game’s equivalent of New Orleans are surprising and I’m amazed when I sit and watch the show, all the way through, the amount of effort they’ve put into what’s on stage. This is a game world crafted with care and details and a passion.
The main story arc is also very good, and haunting at the end.
Bottom line: my advice is don’t get caught up in things like the game mechanics but rather commit to explore this world and story. It’s pretty unique and amazing.
Well I’ll be the contrary voice and say you really don’t need to play RDR1 first. In fact it adds to the suspense when you don’t know the futures of the characters! The second game is head and shoulders above the first, which I started three times and could never finish.
I struggle to play this game.
I think the fact that it takes a week to load between all the programs and services it opens doesn’t help.
My internet was down all day and is currently dog shit and I figured I’d play some RDR2.
Of course Rockstar says I don’t own it or something because I’m Offline. Guess I was stealing it for 13 hours.
I’m in Chapter 2 I think and it still feels restrictive with a ton of crap that is locked.
I’m pretty sure I enjoy it when I’m playing it, but at the same time I find it nearly impossible to click Play.
It’s on rails for a bit before you finally get the Open World field. Once that happens it’s a lot better although you still need to do some of the story based quests to open up more stuff like skills and guns and maybe something else. I remember looking online trying to figure out why I can’t do all this neat stuff they were talking about, and it turned out I had to do a few more story things to get those things.
I spent way too much time roaming around doing whatever I wanted.
I assumed as much, but doing quests is hard when I just want to shoot some ducks.
And then next thing you know I’m heading to town or the camp with a deer, duck and god knows what else.
Wait until you try a get a damn woodpecker!
Oh man, now I’m thinking about collecting all those damn birds for that hat guy. If I ever replay RDR2 I’m skipping that quest line.
I feel like I put too much into it to stop now. It’s taken me… hours to chase down tiny birds.
I traveled all over looking for rat skins because I just had to have a certain hat. Found a few here and there, in ruins and around corpses and such. Even went to the docks at St. Denis for a look. Didn’t have much luck at all. Then I stumbled into a saloon and the barkeep there asks me to take care of his rat problem. That was probably the happiest I’ve ever felt doing a kill rats quest.
I wish games like this had a “story-free” mode that just allowed you to start with the fun and roaming part, instead of being locked behind the gamertax gates, in this case, tons of slow, pondering, meandering story-bits.
The game seems fun, but I’ve stalled 3 times now, trying to get into it, due to all the heavy slow story bits.
I strongly recommend you approach this game as an adventure and just go with whatever it throws your way. As @Nesrie mentioned, once you get to Chapter 2 you can do whatever you feel like. You don’t need better guns, the starting weapons are good and kill just as well as the ones you get later, it mostly comes down to style and what you prefer. Stats will level up as you do various activities so you’re not really wasting your time fooling around and just doing whatever feels fun. I think I spent about 30-40h of my total playtime of 70h so far just hunting and fishing. It’s incredibly relaxing. Sometimes I’ll go an hour or two just tracking animals and studying them, without even firing a shot. And there is always a mini event just around a corner, either a damsel in distress, or a coach wagon being held up by the local bandings. And you have full freedom on how you choose to approach them, and best of all, the world will react to it. It’s actually a better roleplaying game than some games that claim to be RPGs.
Tons of stuff is still locked in Chapter 2, heck I’m almost done with it I think. I can’t fish. Fishing is locked.
So I have to go through more story stuff until it unlocks things. I mean I’ve basically been doing my own thing, but so much stuff is still locked for me. Also jank internet means I can only fire it up when my ISP isn’t shitting it’s pants, which it’s doing on and off every day.
It’s still hard to fire up. Long time from press Play to actually playing. Rockstar’s thing has to show up and make sure I own the game and try to sell me something. Then unskippable intros. Then words. Then press buttons to be allowed to press buttons to start to load my game. It’s just tiring in some way I can’t explain. When games have this issue I find them very hard to keep playing.
Just as an example I played Monster Hunter World like a freak for months. Then one day it took 5 minutes to load. I stopped playing MHW. And then uninstalled it (even after figuring out what caused it, which I spent dozens of hours on). The shine was gone and it felt exhausting even thinking about it, despite the game loading like it used to.
RDR2 has always been in the “tiring” category to start. It’s a game I can’t really play while doing anything else, which is often great, but also a point against it many times. Like it’s not something I can hop on and do something quick in. Pressing Play is a 2+ hour commitment most of the time. Usually a lot more.
Again, a lot of that is me, but a fair amount is random launchers and nonsense designed to waste my time. Then stuff is locked because fuck you. We don’t sell fishing poles to people who haven’t done some random story mission 'round these parts.
Also put some warm clothes on Arthur you’re gonna freeze to death on this mild spring day in full cold weather gear.
That’s why I also said you kind of have to do some of the story quests to open those up. It’s not right at the beginning. It’s like what, 4-5 in or something like that. And then fishing is that one quest… you definitely don’t have to complete the whole chapter’s quests, just some / few of them and then bam… it’s open and you wonder why they felt the need to lock you in the first place.
This is also why i didn’t finish. At least with MHW I could do progress in an hour. RDR 2 I felt I needed at least 2 hours… and for things to go well.
Also that’s uninterrupted not MP time which I don’t dedicate as often either.
I mean I’ve felt that with basically everything that’s been locked. :)
And I have no fishing quest on the map. In fact I’m down to like one quest I think and a couple bounties. Said quest is unlikely to deal with fishing (though anything is possible I guess).
I guess my position right now is: I’ve done a bunch of story quests. And most things are still locked. And now I’m just annoyed by it and can’t get the will to actually start the game knowing I have to do more of them. Like I don’t want to do the only quest I have really. But it’s the only quest I have, so… if I load up the game, I guess that’s what I’m doing. It’s like knowing there is a Ciri part in Witcher 3. I don’t want to play a flashback of some other character. But at least there I could generally fuck off and do whatever, at least until I started it.
Here I can fuck off and do some things, but not whatever because stuff is arbitrarily locked cause I haven’t done the thing I’m not that interested in doing. Meh.
That said I’m off to give it a shot, because I’m bored and everything sounds dull to me, so I might as well do it now.
It’s been a while since I played this, but I don’t remember that much stuff being actually locked away once you’re out of the snow. What are all the things, besides fishing, that you want to do but they wont let you?
Falconry.
I just played for 6 hours and still can’t fish. Then I rage quit some stupid mission I didn’t want to do since I’d just done like 5 of them in a row to try to get to where I could fucking fish.
You basically can’t fish or buy like much of anything. I had unlocked a ton of things, but when you get to Chapter 2 your options are basically: shoot animals or do missions because nearly everything else is locked until you do missions that unlock stuff. All the camp stuff is locked behind missions, most things you can buy, a lot of activities, just tons of stuff. A lot of it unlocks fairly easily and naturally, but other stuff like fishing is buried deep in a quest tree.
I still don’t have it and now I need to rob a train or something and I’m just so sick of everything right now. I just wanted to fish. It’s been 20 hours can I buy a fishing rod already?
The rod is free! I really enjoyed fishing in this game, probably half my total gameplay time was fishing.
Just keep playing!