You've done it again Rockstar. You've made me fall in love and forget to feed myself.
The same has happened with RDR. I was just as eager to play it as I was with GTA4. When I started playing it I ran around a bit to see how the animation mechanics were working and how well the Euphoria engine was integrated. Again, I was very disappointed. The game didn't seem finished/polished. Depression sank in... the razor blades were starting to look very appealing at this point. I was expecting GTA4 x 100. That was a wrong expectation. RDR is its own game. So I continued the story and kept playing and lone behold, I'm simply obsessed.
Whats good you ask? Pretty much everything. The environment is phenomenal. The look of the dirt, the movement of the long grass and shrubs, the wildlife and its randomness, the random people who need your help, the crazy stories you hear, shooting cows, awesome clothing, lassoing people and draggin em behind you, dead eye, duels, shooting innocents, guttin you boy!, and my GOD the detail of the horses. Never have I seen such beautiful detail in any animated polygonal figure.
However, I do have my issues with this game. These are issues based on past experiences with other games:
1) The euphoria engine is not what it could be in this game. In GTA4 when you walk into people your body parts will interact with NPCs. In RDR the collision box that Marston has is just that, a rectangular box. Its not his body parts that interact with NPCs, its this collision box. This box makes it look like NPCs are being hit by a wall.
2) Horse animations are amazing but not the best I've seen. Shadow of the Colossus had, without a doubt, the best horse animations I've ever seen in a game. Although RDR's horse animations are spectacular, they're not the best.
3) Minor glitches here and there blah blah blah. Glitches make things funny, so therefore I love them lol. (con? pro? I DUNNO!)
My cons are there just to balance out my review. They don't hurt the core gameplay in anyway.
In conclusion, this game is amazing. Yea it has some tiny issues but it doesn't take away from the overall feeling you'll experience when you play it. I could write for days and days about my experiences with this game but doing so would take too long and I'm hungry. PLAY IT and enjoy as I have and will do so for a long time coming.