Red Dead Redemption 2 - Game Review

I've been debating with myself for a long time about the idea of buying this game, the reviews didn't encourage me at all, Rockstar's games about optimizing and releasing the PC game at different times in different stores, too. But so many years I wanted to play the first RDR and so many years I waited for the second one that I finally gave in to temptation and bought it, fearful and ready for a quick turnaround. After all, since so many people play it every day, it must work for some people.

And to my relief I ended up in the camp of the lucky ones, because the game, despite performance problems, works extremely stable for me. During the 18 hours that I have played so far, I have only passed 5 paces (and only one during the mission) and had to restart the game. I didn't experience any bugs or errors in the game or Rockstar Launcher, I had no problems with starting it.

The most I can stick to is two things: optimization and appearance. The game uses the same engine as the GTA V, which is already in the left-hand side, and to cover it up, it was overloaded with effects, molecules, volumetric fog, lighting and, worst of all, with a nasty TAA anti-aliasing method that makes everything fuzzy. And when you turn off TAA, it's all jagged again, the edges are blinking, all the vegetation is as if composed of dots and it looks at least bad, especially when moving.

And I really can't understand how the same company that made such crystal clear and clean graphics, with beautiful effects, in the GTA V, couldn't do the job here at all. And don't misunderstand me, because RDR2 looks really good in many places, has beautiful views, rich vegetation, almost no pop-in textures, but unfortunately it looks good mainly from afar and during more dynamic scenes / movements. When we stand and look at the world, the models, textures, you can see this already worn out engine with the effects on it, which sometimes looks weird, the surfaces shine too much from the exaggerated lighting, and from between the dense grass there is flat and blurry terrain texture.

This leads to a very uneven graphic quality, and the game is sometimes breathtaking to hit the face with 2013 graphics in a moment. Unfortunately, it's not enough to mess up the effects and smear everything to make it look like current standards. I fought for a long time to make the faces of the characters visible from more than 5 meters away and not turn into a blurry mass. All these effects cause additional scandalous performance, because there are just a lot of them and no wonder that the present equipment suffocates when every blade of grass is tesseled and shaded.

Apart from the look and optimization, the game is really high in terms of both plot and gameplay. The world is incredibly complex, huge and full of activity, random events, people, towns, villages and interesting places. There are mountains, there is prairie, there are swamps, peat bogs, vast forests and I don't even know what else, because I still haven't visited the whole map.

The plot looks interesting, naturally woven into the world, times, rich in side stories and varied missions. A lot is still ahead of me, but so far I am delighted. All of it is played with atmospheric music, and the additional magic of many places and situations is given a great sound.

The control is a bit limp, our character has a lot of weight, the interactions with the environment are very frustrating, because they require a perfect location to the object, which often ends up dancing next to it. Moreover, the keyboardology is overloaded and strangely conceived, because it changes the keys every now and then, once it makes you press them, then hold them, it's really hard to keep up with it. There are many things you can do by chance, or do not do what you wanted, sometimes you have to be very careful not to hurt someone, which has already happened to me several times.

You have to take into account that the game is pretty slow, it's very realistic, there are a lot of animations and activities that may seem unnecessary. It has a completely different style, more like RPG than an action game. You also travel a lot on horseback, and the distances are great, so you can't count on fast movement. There are trains and stagecoasts, but first you have to get to them. Certainly not everyone will like this slow game.

In conclusion...

So for my part, I have to say that my experience is positive for the time being. Unfortunately I had to devote a lot of time to the configuration of graphic settings, the gameplay through a rather clumsy control is not one of the smoothest, but in general I did not experience such problems as many people, the game both starts and works well most of the time.

I play on i7 6700K, 16GB RAM, Vega 56 on Win10, on a mix of high-medium settings (with a predominance of high), modelled on those from the Hardware Unboxed Guide (+ with Async computing enabled), at a resolution of 1080p on the Vulkan engine and for most games I have stable 60fps, which fall very rarely, mainly in larger cities in the evening and at night, when there is a lot of light.

I'm writing this mainly to share my experience and to show that there are some people that this game works and they can enjoy it in bearable quality and performance. It is far from perfect and criticism is well deserved, but with a bit of luck, you can play it. I hope it's over. ;)

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