The most honest review of this game: highly addictive but ultimately still has MANY FLAWS which NO ONE EVER MENTIONS!
Addictive and funny. Great horse play control and good gunplay. Nice characters. Voice acting and dialogue are great... although later in the game about 15 hours in or so it starts to get a bit stale with the protagonist feeling like he's wasting his time and I can't help but think I'm wasting mine too sometimes. I've come to expect too much from video games it seem but what I expected from this game is really not THAT much and is what Rockstar simply CANNOT EVER do right: POLISH. The game lacks polish. Big time.
The bad:
I haven't gotten to Mexico yet, ok and I've noticed 3 bugs, like major ones. First one time when I looted a body, the text to show how much money I had and was receiving came up then it got distorted and the sound started to flicker. Another time was one of those random events happened where a man was asking for help but steals your horse instead. The man got on my horse then the horse suddenly appeared 40 feet ahead the man sitting on air, then a couple of second later he caught up to the horse. I mean really? LIttle annoying things like opening drawers, searching armoires takes way too long, JUST OPEN THE BLOODY DRAWER.. I don't want to see a 10 second long animation every time!! You idiots, Rockstar. It's almost infintile in the way that was handled. WE WANT FAST. Make it quick. Any random little thing that the protagonist does shouldn't not take more than 2-3 seconds. Speaking about the random events, often time you miss then because you're galloping too fast. Also, the first time I did the "save the hanging woman" one, I had no idea I had to shoot the rope. The text explaining that came while I was in a gunfight with the bandits, so I kept missing it, like 3 times I missed it. Also, I wish there was a way to practice duels. There's also many graphical glitches and stupid shit like flaky hit detection. Like why the hell wouldn't Rockstar fix that with updates? It's annoying. But the thing is, Rockstar games have always been like that. They've always LACKED POLISH. And ultimately RDR plays pretty much like GTA3, Vice city, San adreas and GTA4. I feel like I'm a kid playing this. GTA5 is supposed to at least add multiple players... but why should I expect it to be any more polished than this?? This is a joke. It takes out out of the reality of the game. And ultimately that's just what it is.. it's less an experience and it's just a game. Well, excuse me if I'm looking for something more in a game. Poker in the game is alright, but again QUICK. The animations are too long.
Another thing, if the story is best when certain mission are done in a certain order than make sure that the player does them in that order. It looked really dumb when I went to armadillo, already having talked to some people, done some missions, only to go back to Bonnie to have her introduce me to Armadillo? Like, come on.
Although the game is fun and addictive, in the end it's sometimes flaky hit detection, graphical glitches and bugs turned me off. So **** all the reviewers out there. They should all be complaining for this game's lack of polish. GTA5 better be polished as hell or it's a WASTE OF TIME.