Red Dead Redemption 2 is a critically acclaimed open-world action-adventure game set during a fictional representation of the infamous period known as the Wild West, specifically set during the period of the decline of the age of Outlaws. This review will only talk about the Story Mode portion of the game and disregards the Online portion (go to the Online store's page for reviews about that piece of ♥♥♥♥).

WRITING: 5 / 5

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It's an understatement to say that Red Dead Redemption 2's writing is a piece of masterwork. The writing of this game is a notch above the rest to me and a sets a new trend in storytelling, one that Dan Houser describes as 'subverting the weak to strong' trope. Every story mission will elicit some kind of emotional response from you ranging from happy, to amusement, to sadness, to anger and you'll be guaranteed to both feel fulfillment as well as post-game depression by the time you're done.

GRAPHICS: 4 / 4

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Built on the in-house Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, RDR2's iteration pushes into the next-gen territory with some of the most realistic graphics and awe inspiring visuals. Even though there may be graphically better games out there that try too hard for photorealism, RDR2's visuals get the job done while staying true to the Old West fantasy.

GAMEPLAY: 5 / 5

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Many complaints about this game usually tend to be about the gameplay being "slow" but that's just subjective. To me, the realistic and slower gameplay is a refreshing change of pace from most modern games that tend to be fast paced and aimed at instant surface level gratification, and in some way is relaxing. For gratification in this game, you need to actually experience and earn it. The game world is chock filled with content that feels unique, you have a lot of interactivity with the world (that is just the right size) which ensures that it doesn't feel dead, combat and horse mechanics are grounded and weighty, hunting and challenges are unique and interesting to do etc. This game is a stark contrast from most modern open-world games that just bloats their open-worlds with quantity over quality and major amounts of redundancy.

SOUNDTRACK: 4 / 4

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From the harmonicas, to the pianos, to the violins, to the actions beats and even to John Marston's theme remixed from the first game... this game's soundtrack has it all to keep you engaged throughout the game. Woody Jackson and Daniel Lanois have created quite the unique OST.

OPTIMIZATION: 3.75 / 4

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There were quite a bit of optimization issues, but one year down the line, most of those have been ironed out and the game runs quite well even at Higher settings. This is in stark comparison to some newer games which use up twice the resources on your PC for half the quality and fidelity (*coughs* Valhalla *coughs*).

BUSINESS MODEL: 2.75 / 3

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As mentioned at the very beginning, this review is about the Story Mode only so I will be disregarding Online completely especially in regards to this segment. RDR2 is a complete game from start to finish with at least 200+ hours of engaging content, and even has a 10-20 hour Epilogue which is part of the base game instead of being an add-on DLC. Sadly, there's no planned story expansion and this is a negative point to Online (which goes into an Online review for that particular store's page) like Undead Nightmare for the first game.

TOTAL: 24.5 / 25 = My rating for the game is 98%.

Sorry Witcher 3 + Geraldo, RDR2 + Arthur are now my best friends.