This review contains spoilers

Extremely comfy cowboy sim that looks and sounds great. I had a very nice time just riding around from mission to mission in the open world. Arthur is one of the most sympathetic video game characters I've ever played as and I felt worse about him catching tuberculosis than I feel about most characters' deaths. His voice acting was phenomenal and the progression of his feelings regarding Dutch was perfectly executed. I felt his pain when Dutch tried to leave him to his death at the oil field and when he stepped on the gun in the final scene. He also singlehandedly raised my opinion of realistic graphics in video games because I doubt the best scenes would have had as much of an impact if I couldn't see the subtle expressiveness of his face. Aside from Arthur, the game is just riddled with excellent highlights like the assault on the Braithwaite manor, Arthur's last conversation with Reverend Swanson, and the whole epilogue which retroactively improved the already great RDR1. The soundtrack was also stellar, which is a very rare thing to bring up when talking about a western AAA game I feel. The only cons I could raise against the game would be the Guarma chapter was kinda lackluster, the gameplay is satisfying but can get tiring in long sessions especially with rockstar's typical railroading, holding X so much hurt my thumb, and Sadie got annoying sometimes, but overall it was a great journey.

Reviewed on Aug 23, 2021


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