Recent reviews by Phelps

A spectacular title, in terms of technology, made by Rockstar, as you'd expect, that suffers from a lot of gameplay and lore related issues, again, as you'd expect from Rockstar. It's another Rockstar game that has taken one step forward in terms of Gameplay and Story without them still being good, merely acceptable at best, and 10 steps ahead in terms of graphics, world design and attention to detail.

The missions are all linear as hell; there's basically no freedom in terms of what you can do (Hogtied a guy instead of killing him? Restart! Used a weapon you weren't supposed to? Restart! Decided to take a shortcut? Restart!)
The gameplay itself really isn't much to speak up it's just cookie-cutter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Rockstar formula where 'interactivity' is holding down the interaction button near different cabinets to pick up crackers or something, still, that's more interactivity than half of the modern 'open world' games now-a-days, and a HUGE step up compared to GTA 5. However the gunplay is
much better than their other games (cough cough GTA 5), this game is actually fairly competent in that regard. Shooting stuff feels good, shooting people feels better, especially in the online mode. Again, too bad it's not utilized and expanded upon more than it should've during missions and OUTSIDE missions, especially with having such a limited range of weaponry (there's enough, but there should've been more, especially considering half of them are just garbage for the most part, and you'll take your first chance to swap them out ASAP). All in all it's very simplistic, with about 0 depth to it, practically no innovations.
And the story, it's not that great, definitely not as great as people make it out to be. There's this pattern with Rockstar games where they make great, compelling characters and/or dialogue for said characters, but without the plot being that smart (the last Rockstar game with a decent plot was older GTA titles like Vice City and San Andreas) or without the characters being that deep and simply having dialogue that sounds good on a surface level.
This game falls somewhere in the middle; there's some good characters (the main cast, Arthur, Dutch, Hosea, John to some extent, Rains Fall, Charles)... and then there's everyone else who's name I don't even remember, and couldn't care less about them dying or whatever in spite of having around 300 hours on the Single Player alone. The dialogue between all these characters however is written competently enough for them to not be a nuisance on screen at the very least, because again, that's the one thing Rockstar, or rather Dan Houser did well, without him around you can imagine how the dialogue in the new game is gonna look like.
The game also features one of the most one-dimensional villains in most modern media, which is a good thing because sometimes you just need a Villain to actually act like a Villain instead of having them read out an entire autobiography when they're blowing up a bus full of school children. Micah basically lacks any depth aside from bits and pieces you can cipher through dialogue and a random letter in the camp. However that makes it even more mind-boggling on why Dutch decided to listen to anything this guy says in the first place, Dutch clearly isn't portrayed as a dumbass and Micah lacks any tact whatsoever, Dutch as a seasoned Conman shoulda realised just how much of an absolute liability and how much of a snake Micah is, it's not like he even tried to hide it, I guess the writers decided to turn off Dutch's brain and erase all his wisdom for that one plotline to work.

Oh and to remove any initiative on Arthur or John or anyone else's side to just off him and dump him in a barrel or something; they've killed hundreds of officers, sheriff, lawmen et cetera, but killing ONE rogue gang member? Nah they won't do that, why would they, even though they know the guy's bad news all over?
It's not like they have to do it in such an obvious manner, just have him be 'shot' in a shootout it's not like Dutch is gonna hire a coroner to check the body and match the bullet with the ones in Arthur's possession or something. At best it'd be ruled out as just another casualty in the shootout, hell, Arthur could've killed him in Strawberry.

In short, there's absolutely 0 way Micah should've realistically been able to fool the biggest Conman in the entire game, and the fact that no-one even thought of taking him out is such ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥; the Gang is supposed to be more ruthless than they're shown but for some reason they always get all soft when the writers want them to apparently.

The plot itself is fine, the main conflicts around the game are okay enough to keep you interested but honestly it's only at it's peak when the Pinkertons decide to rain down on the Gang itself. It's the one time in a Rockstar game where authority is taken seriously and actually portrayed as a threat for you to worry about.
Other than that it's a pretty generic Western Spaghetti but somehow worse because there's less focus on the 'Western Spaghetti' aspects and more on 'please feel bad for these characters'. It's so blatantly clear that the game's just desperately trying to make you feel something, so you'll ignore the fact that aside from a handful of characters the rest are just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring.
And then there's this weird detour from the main plot point with the Indian subplot, because? I guess they needed to stretch the game like 2-3 chapters more or something, again, in spite of it not even making sense since the gang's supposed to be lying the hell low, fighting against the Army even if it's just stealing medicine from them or whatever isn't exactly the wisest thing to do. Still, it did actually introduce a character I could give a damn about (Rains Fall).

Now for the world, the world itself is the best part of this game; it's big, but not huge and empty, the points of interests are good, the stranger missions are whatever, and the locations are interesting and memorable enough for the player to become engrossed in it. This is one aspect that's consistently of very high quality in almost all Rockstar games. The Open World is amazing, full of little details you can find if you look hard enough, with an environment that feels alive and some colorful people to meet that you'll forget about in 2 seconds.

In all honestly it's pretty telling just how good Rockstar is at making open worlds and the more 'artificial' aspects of their games (Graphics, world design and layout, encounters et cetera) whereas the more 'humane' aspects (story, character writing) are often weak by comparison, and some of the technical aspects (gameplay, level design) are the weakest. It's a constant that never changes with ANY of their games and is only enhanced in some cases (GTA SA having a decent story line as mentioned) but then they return right back to status quo.

Overall, if I had to give this game a score I'd give it a 6. It's not mid, it just suffers from so many issues beneath the surface that you can't just walk past them. However I'd still recommend it, as it is the last good Rockstar game you're gonna get. And if you love the Western genre as much as I do you'd be stupid to not give this a try.

Add sunglasses.

Marry me Atlus.

Devs, blink twice if you're alive.

Massive improvement in terms of everything from their last game.

This game's so good man, once you get the ball rolling on beating people to a pulp it just feels ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GREAT. Every punch has so much weight behind it; it really helps with the immersion, and the learning curve really isn't as steep as some people make it out to be (I have the reflexes of a corpse and I could pull it off), it's more a matter of repetition and adapting to the controls which can be a bit wonky sometimes to my own admission.

The game's story is compelling enough but it's really not the main focus of it to begin with, the music also nice but it's nothing memorable other than the Club one.

Overall, it's an amazing experience all throughout with a lot of replayability; and for the price tag it's definitely worth it. Give Sifu a try.

Sad to hear how the devs absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this one up.
Game's dead as ♥♥♥♥, don't bother hoping for it to come back, it was good while it lasted.

The ACTUAL game of the year 2023.

Give this game a big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ miss.
The core gameplay mechanic is stale, boring and repetitive as hell, the objectives and the maps are all terrible, especially objectives which just lack variety simply put, and more importantly they lack *creativity*, all the objectives can be dumbed down to : Go here, use terminal, deliver package, go extract.
The side objectives might as well not exist because they all literally involve a terminal or delivering something- what are you the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mailman or a badass space marine? It's like they wanted to implement the most generic form of RPG Fetch Quests in this game and oh lord did they succeed, cause it sucks ♥♥♥♥.
The game, simply put, doesn't respect your time at all. And as always, and this is a petty gripe, but the best weapons are locked behind a Warbond that'll take ages of grinding, and let me tell you if players are coming up with ways to undermine the gameloop and cut shortcuts, you're doing something wrong.
You're literally locked into shooting with squirt guns for the first 20 hours of the game, that barely do damage, having to grind to get acceptable weapons is NOT good game design.
Speaking of the gameplay, the shooting is incredibly simplistic and just a headache, for some reason they had the bright idea to include a magazine based reload system instead of a regular one more fitting for a glorified Horde Shooter. This isn't Ready or Not, but apparently the devs thought this game was 'tactical' or some ♥♥♥♥.
The fact that so many people think this game is god's gift to humanity, well let's just say our standards are stooping a bit too low even for my liking, just go play EDF. This game is garbage and nothing will fix it until they overhaul the game entirely.
A reminder that the devs aren't your friends, be it an indie company or a AAA one, they do not give a single ♥♥♥♥ about you or the fun factor of their games, profit comes first.

Pretty cute. Needs more balancing options definitely but it is appealing to those of you who like business management games.