Another user review:

"Red Dead Redemption is easily the most overrated title I have ever played. It gets a 3 because blowing through the campaign was fun the first time, and it loses 7 points for everything else.

Firstly, the story was atrocious. Every character was extremely archetypal. In some cases(Irish, Shaky), characters were so cliched that they were named for their archetypes. The dialogue characters exchanged was incredibly poorly written. Actual quote: "Change is only good if it's for the better." -Bonnie Macfarlane. This blatantly obvious "good things are only good if they're good" quote is a perfect example of how the writers try to be deep and fail miserably. Red Dead tries to make the player sympathize with protagonist John Marston because he is going through hard times and has been separated from his wife and son, who will die unless he takes action to save them, but I found it completely impossible to sympathize with Marston- He is a mass murderer with absolutely no scruples. He constantly makes threats of physical violence against his friends/allies like Irish and Nigel West Dickens, and he destroys the Mexican government and puts a tyrant(Reyes) in control of Mexico- Reyes goes on to slaughter thousands of Mexican civilians. The part of RDR that really showcases what a bad character Marston is is one of the final missions when Marston is working on his ranch- a ranch hand tells Marston that there are some valuable wild horses nearby and asks if they should go catch some. Instead of doing what any decent person would do(complement the ranch hand for spotting the horses, promise him a raise, get his help, and catch some horses), Marston berates the ranch hand for not immediately going after the horses, calls him a fat old man or something like that, then catches the horses. This encounter just goes to show what an a$$hole Marston is. Marston and all the other lousy characters totally ruin the story. The one part of the story that I like is the very last mission in which Marston is killed. After dozens of missions in which Marston slaughtered people, made needless threats, and behaved like an a$$hole, finally seeing him get what he had coming to him for the whole game was a great reward for slogging through the campaign. Even ignoring the dismal characters, the story was a disjointed mess from start to finish- the game began and ended with strings of brutally boring ranch work quests that had to do with shooting crows that were eating corn, and boring things like that. Proponents of RDR have claimed that the end ranch missions provide closure for those invested in the story, which I can believe, but I would not know first hand, because there is no reason for anyone to be invested in the story. The whole thing makes no sense. At one point, Marston works with the Mexican army and kills hundreds of Mexican rebels, and then he makes the spur-of-the-moment decision to raid a fort, kill a group of Mexican soldiers, and free the captured rebel leader because a hot female told him to. Then, the rebels welcome him as a brother and pretend the thing where he killed hundreds of them never happened- in reality, the rebels would have killed him first chance they got, because he, you know, killed hundreds of them. That is just one example- the whole story was equally senseless. If you care at all about good story or characters, don't get RDR.

The settings started out interesting but quickly grew boring. While each of the towns looked different, all the areas of the wilderness either were plains that all looked the same or were snowy forests that all looked the same. Settings were extremely redundant.

Controls, graphics, and music were all okay. Combat was well done, but nothing about it was original, except for the lasso, which only came into play occasionally, and even then was fairly uninteresting. Run up close to someone and throw a lasso at that person to capture said person. Nothing else to it. Combat was redundant. Missions, gang hideouts, bounties- it all felt the same and was way too easy. Most of the different guns felt the same. Activities like hunting, bounties, and gang hideout clearing quickly grew boring. As far as gameplay is concerned, RDR was just bland, and it would need to be incredible to make up for the story and make this a game worth playing.

Also, voice acting was another problem. Native American interpreter Nastas was just appalling and whenever he talked, I paid less attention to what he was saying and more attention to how fake his voice sounded. Fortunately, he was a very minor character, however the same cannot be said for John Marston. The main character was voiced by another bad voice actor- not as bad as the Nastas voice actor, but still pretty bad.

I care about an interesting story, realistic characters, creative settings, imaginative gameplay mechanics, good music and good voice acting, all things RDR lacked. It had decent combat and graphics, but other games have much better."

He focused a bit more on story than I would, but he's right, the story in RDR is absolutely piss poor, bottom of the barrel trash.