Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

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After having played RDR2 a month report

This is one heck of a beautiful game. Rockstar has done a superb job creating the Wild West environment. I’ve spent more time in the online portion of the game than the solo game.

Online Game

The online portion is most fun in story mode with friends. IMO the game is designed around coop play. As long as you can find a joint mission to do, it’s going to be fun, and it does not have to be your mission to be fun, or to get credits for it. There are professions in game- trader, collector, bounty hunter, and bootlegger. If you help somone do their trader mission, and you have established trader as a profession, you to will get points towards the trader progression.

The nuts and bolts of a profession are soloable. For trader, hunt and kill animals to turn into your handyman Kripps at your camp, fetch him other related supplies and deliver goods to buyers (soloable), but there are missions in the profession “getting established phase“ that can be difficult without help. Doing it with friends is the most fun, and the most successful because some missions are very challenging for one player to accomplish.

When doing the online phase, solo, it’s a grind. Hunting animals, (Trader) is the most fun at first, but after you get into the routine, it’s a grind. Searching the landscape for collectibles is a grind. Bounty hunting solo can be fun some missions (bounties), but other missions can be next to impossible such as apprehend 4 people alive with a timer runner.

There are group activities that pop up, some are PVE and some PVP, and when one pops up on your screen, it has a minimal description, so you don’t know at first what you are getting into, or if you are in over your head until you are committed.

At this point I don’t really know what the end game consists of, possibly endless grinding, better horses and gear, and endless group activities. How much trading can you do before getting tired of it?

There also some issues with forming posses. The Rick Star Social Club structure is a mess. You have to be a friend, have to be in a crew, and the online portion of the game is spread out over dozens if not more of instances/servers so joining someone’s posse means joining both their session(server) and their posse, and sometimes unable to join their posse for an unapparent reason, which is frustrating as hell.

There is a serious issue with hacking. On several occasions I’ve found myself and posse teleported and then murdered by sometimes invisible opponents.

Good news: Minimal death penalty, missions can be resumed, but maybe subject to a timer. This also applies when you are murdered by another player. Tip: Missions put you in offensive mode. After each mission, hit L, scroll to online, and put yourself back into defensive mode. In this way if you are innocently gunned down by an ass wipe, you can report them, which puts a bounty on them. My understanding is that if you are in offensive, your dot on the map appears red, and you can be killed by other players without consequence. So far my experience in game has been good regarding other player interactions. Most are not gankers.

Solo Game

Now, I’m getting my feet wet, with the solo game mode (not the online environment). This is fun and designed for solo game play. The first 2 chapters are completely guided, getting you familiar with the game mechanics and then you are turned loose in the sand box. It may seem a bit mysterious what you are supposed to do next, but there are yellow and orange icons in the map which will draw you to missions and activities, along with some excellent online guides. And note on one of the early missions you might find yourself left in town (Valentine) by your AI companions, whistle up your horse which will most likely be around. :)

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I also recently git this on a sale but haven’t delved into it too far actually. Your assessment of the game is quite comprehensive and thanks for the input!

Does OTG even have a foothold on a crew in the Rockstar realm? Obviously the game would be more fun in general playing with others, but not being a real PvP player in general, I have been loathe to actually try the online game mode. Being that the game really has no total PvE environment, I hate to run around solo making myself a nice bulls-eye target.

I wish there was a way ti import my steam friends list into Rockstar, but I can see why they dont want that. My (now quite old) Xbox friends list is minimal, but I imported it anyway to see who it rounds up.

heres hping to see more people in there as time goes along!

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There is an OTG presence in RDR2, and there are a fair amount of people playing. Check the Discord channel, I pinned a list of usernames there as well.

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Lately you can find between 3-4-8 people on the OTG Discord channel. With more experience I have decided that with the online Collectors map, and using Eagle Eye, that Collecting is the easiest profession. In game, you will hear a jingle sound when you are near a collectible and Eagle Eye, will show a particle display of the item when near. There are a large number of items spread all over the map, and you get paid well for a wide variety of collectibles. Word is more xp and $ for turning in compete collections, versus individual items.

Bounty Hunting is the most difficult solo. I’ve had bad experiences solo bounty hunting, frequenting on a bounty mission for a single person, frequently running into packs of enemies all attacking you, while the target frequently is running away. I’m sure there are some players who excel at this solo, but not me. :grimacing:

Hunting, part of Trading, can be relaxing, but is a huge grind, even if you learn how to farm cougars that respawn repeatedly in the exact same place. Note: Cougars for some unknown reason are high value and provide a large amount of supplies to your AI trading partners Crippes. The process is kill animals and bring them to Crippes, Go on supply missions (steal them or help an AI settler) or buy tanning supplies for Crippes. Then sell the product that he makes to settlers on a timed run. On some of these runs you can be attacked. It is soloable, but a posse makes it easier and posse members get both xp and 50% of the haul while you get 100%. It gives incentive to posse up especially for bounty hunting.

Also with what little I know about the solo game, online when working with others, it’s much easier to make substantial cash versus In the solo game.

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Thanks for all the info in the thread. As soon as I can actually play games again, I’ll be diving into this I am certain.

Its been a little chos in th house since Monday however as our two cats have decided they no longer know each other and we have some hissing and swatting wars to deal with. you think human problems are difficult, you havent tried to break up a cat fight.

At any rateonce the world of feline aggressions are terminated, I’ll try and find some of you all in discord and online for some starup help and fun :wink:

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I’ve eased off the game since first posting. My updated observations: the game does not have staying power for me.

Online:

  • Scripted missions are fun.
  • Professions most fun in group activities, like bounty hunting, but these will get old after a while. Bounty hunting can be tough solo.
  • Professions are kill or collect, craft, get supplies, deliver items. Some of the tasks like deliveries are fun in a group, and are lucrative. Collecting is just collecting.
  • Game is beautiful but feels shallow once you are out of the online story mode (not solo).
  • Game offers daily’s, which are just a tedious to-do list, which I found to be annoying and tedious. Some players really enjoy this though.
  • Problem with hackers ******* with you.

Solo/Story Mode::

  • Scripted story mode is very fun,
  • Much harder to make money, than online mode.
  • Missions will reward important items like weapons.
  • I’ve noticed no professions so far.
  • The game funnels you into the life of a criminal, not unlike GTA, while your boss spews nonsense about being good people with honor, lol. However there are opportunities to be more good, help people or be a prick, bad ass scoundrel. Honestly, I don’t want to be a criminal. :slight_smile:
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I haven’t tried the online mode as of yet, mainly due to the issues with hackers. If they ever get that addressed, I’ll probably check it out so for now I’m just responding to the solo mode portion of your post bullet by bullet from the perspective of having played well into Epilogue 2:

Scripted missions are indeed a lot of fun though it would be nice if the game would tell you the requirements for scoring gold results up front. I usually end up getting bronze/silver results because I had no idea that one of the reqs for getting gold on a particular mission was to (for example) complete the mission using handguns only. Being a bit of a completionist, I find that quite annoying.

On the issue of making money, if you’re not above using guides to help you out a bit, this isn’t really an issue. They do contain some spoiler type information (things you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of if you were just playing the game blindly) but will enable you to have your camp fully upgraded early on in Chapter 2. I shant post links here to avoid tempting those who really don’t want to know things that Arthur wouldn’t know, but google RDR2 guides and/or RDR2 maps and you’ll be set if you so desire. I will say this: Poison arrows are awesome for hunting legendary animals… :slight_smile:

You do have to do the missions and progress through the chapters to upgrade your weapons but, again, if you are willing to “cheat” a bit and look at guides/maps you can stay in Chapter 2 for a long time using your basic repeater, the Springfield rifle, varmint gun, and bow with poison, small game and improved arrows. That’s what I’m doing on my second playthrough as Chapter 2 is the most “pleasant” (IMHO) part of the game.

Definitely no professions in the solo mode.

Well, Arthur is a criminal and has been for 20 years. But, as you pointed out, you do have the ability to help people out and/or be merciful in certain situations which will increase your honor score. I’m like you, I don’t want to be a criminal, but since I have to be, I’d like to at least be an honorable one… :slight_smile: Once you get to Epilogue 1, what kind of person you are is is almost entirely up to you.

Spoiler section below us just me ranting a bit about a couple of things and definitely contains some spoilers so don’t go there if you don’t want spoilers. You have been warned!

In hindsight, I wish the game gave me the option of killing Dutch in his sleep because he’s the most incompetent criminal mind in history. How the hell did this gang survive for 20 years when every criminal job they do is “the one score we need” and it always goes horribly wrong?! Oh, and Micah too. 'Cause well, Micah’s a first class rat bastard.

Overall takeaways from the solo game: It made me happy, it made me mad. I laughed out loud and I cried. Literally. I can’t honestly say that about any other game I’ve ever played since I started playing computer games on my Commie 64 back in the '80s.

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Hello! A group of us are still actively playing this game - it’s so beautiful, how could you not! We have maxed all 4 of the professions on the online version and we continue to do dailies for gold and xp - just waiting for the next content patch.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to join us in the discord channel if you want some helpful tips or just want to hang out and chat :slight_smile:
Stop by!!

Z

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I should probably start playing this game. I had it for a bit but I have a bad habit of playing games until I finish so I’m only just ready to start the game.

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We are currently in the process of waiting on the next update and also hopeful that Rockstar will let us form private lobbies - like they have done with GTA5, to cut down on some of the hacker activity. Right now we still actively hang out in the channel but we’re playing a variety of other games :slight_smile: