This is a great game, but it can feel a little bit repetitive at times.
Well here is my opinion on the matter. First of all there is a huge map, which means there are a ton of things to explore, but to be honest I was never was interested to go exploring, the overworld just seems to be a bit bland. For all of the missions you must travel to certain people and if I am being honest I am more of an old fashioned gamer, I prefer games that you always go from level to level, or objective to objective, but I guess you should expect this when you buy a game made by Rockstar because most of their games are made this way now. It's not horrible but like I said I'm not a big fan of it. The Characters are great, each one is voice acted superbly and there are a lot of characters that just seem to stand out. The story is definitely one of the best parts of Red Dead Redemption, the characters definitely help make it interesting and the ending was just outstanding. (Spoiler Alert) what astounds me is the ending, they truly outdid themselves, John Marston did everything they asked him to do, they asked him to kill his friends, which he grew up with as an orphan sure he did not like what they had become but he still did not want to kill them but he had to just to be with his family, and yet they still came after him. It truly made me feel bad for this guy; it was just wrong what they did to him. I love at the end that you go in for one last stand, at this point John Marston knows by creaking the barn door open that there are too many and that there is no way he is coming out of this alive so instead of running away like a coward he comes out in dead eye mode and you have to try to kill as many as you can but it's just no use and it marks the end of John Marston, this is where you then start to play as his son, there is one final mission but it's a question mark instead of a person's initials, as you find the officer who ordered your father's death, you go into a standoff with him, and I'll tell you I'm not a vengeful person but I'll admit I enjoyed pumping this jerk full of lead, and this is the true end of the game, the credits come up and everything. The story is truly outstanding if you ask me.
Is the gameplay as good as the story though? Well... it can be it seems like a lot of them are just you shooting the bad guys everytime I don't think it's bad in fact the controls are quite good and it can be fun, but it just gets old sometimes I wish that they would of changed some of the missions up, there are some missions that are different like on some of them you must lasso horses or oh God herd cattle yeah I am not a big fan of those missions and of course they have to put it 3 times into the game *sigh* anyways there are a lot of things to do besides missions you can play poker, Save people from bandits, save people from getting attacked by wolves, save people in the middle of the dessert then they try to steal your horse and then you kill them for the money in their wallets, lol, and you can also be a bounty hunter to get more money. Now sure there is a lot to do but honestly it does get kind of old sure some things are fun but they get stale. You will also gain honor and fame as you complete missions and as you do the right thing or the wrong thing, you will either be greeted by people or they will run away from you and in my opinion it's a nice touch.
Overall Red Dead Redemption is a lot different than Red Dead Revolver, but that doesn't make it bad, if you can forgive some of the missions for their repetitiveness you will really enjoy this game the story is really great and it's just a fun game.