A fantastic game all round for what it is. But it is too short.
Due to "unexpected circumstances" you "find" a horse and ride into "Dodge City" (the nearest town). There you can earn extra money to spend on guns by: delivering packages, bringing justice to outlaws, gold digging and more when you get onto the great plains. Throughout the story you see the best of the west. From Apache camps, to run down Union Soldier camps, to railways and the great plains. Dispite all this the map is quite small in my opinion for a game like this. Also there are so many things you want to do but can't, like ride of the railway :D or go on a trek across the plains with bunch of outlaws to cap some indians (or vis versa) whenever you want.
The free range style had to be bigger to make the gameplay perfect. It was also a very short game with not enough side missions or rewards you can go back to after you completed it. And yes if you read any other review it probably mentions the short storyline. I agree totally but if it had any affect on the quality of the game it wouldn't get any praise from me personally.
Nevertheless the story is thoroughly compelling for what it is, voice acting at the highest quality and cracking gameplay on almost all levels makes this a perfect game to rent atleast.