Red Dead Overrated: Long-winded conversations on horseback, with very little action
Here's how the main missions work:
1. Go to mission start point.
2. Watch non-interactive cut scene for a couple of minutes.
3. Hold A for 3-4 minutes (seriously) while you listen to the rider you're following continue to talk.
4. Kill ~6-12 extremely easy bad guys from cover, using the rifle.
5. [optional for some missions] Restart at checkpoint if there's someone in particular you weren't supposed to kill (they often all look like generic cowboys), or if the terrible edge/door clipping blocks your weapon when you're inside buildings. (This is fortunately rare, as most combat is outdoors.)
6. Watch another cut scene, then "enjoy" the fast travel system (see below).
Between missions, you'll invariably get too close to the little blue dots on your map (always on the roads, which are required to minimize boring horse travel), which will start various timed missions/attacks -- even if you're busy on your own errand and don't want to start another task. If it's the case where someone's going to get killed if you don't intervene, you lose points for ignoring the unwanted event. I suppose if you gave a care about every little distraction, this might be considered fun. What's worse is that you can't redo any of these triggered/scripted events -- you either drop what you're doing and pass whatever the criteria is, or you reload your last manually-saved game and steer clear of that event's area by riding off-trail... Which means even more boring horse riding.
[Notes from one of the early main quest providers: If you have me herd one more piece of wildlife... Your coyotes, your cattle, your wild horses, your horse taming... Absolutely none of these exercises are fun, even if you herd every damned animal you're still doing farm work.]
...and Rockstar's idea of fast-travel is needlessly cumbersome:
1. Get off horse.
2. Go to inventory.
3. Click on campsite.
4. Scroll through TEXT list of discovered locations.
5. Forget name of location you want.
6. Exit campsite.
7. Go to map and memorize names of all locations, since you can't just click on the map to begin with.
8. Go to inventory.
9. Click on campsite.
10. Select desired location.
(You've gotta be kidding me...)
Saving your game requires you to either set up camp or, much like every GTA game, travel to one of your houses. Why doesn't Rockstar get this yet? Start-Save-Select_Slot-done.
Granted, the engine is utterly gorgeous. The characters and "dialogue" are extremely well-written. But unless you're a fan of cowboy-sims to the point that you can put up with alternately boring/easy horse-riding sim gameplay long enough to watch the well-written cut scenes, then you'll be dropping this back in the rental envelope, returns counter, or recycling in no time.