Ravern

This is an incredibly long waste of wordage to add pretty much nothing interesting to the body of critical work on this game, which comes as no surprise given the author. The threads on this forum contains far more stimulating and insightful thoughts. Edit: I meant he spends about 1500 words explaining the Breath of the Wild has more satisfying, playful and malleable systems because RDR2 is more interested in its cinematic story, which anyone who has spent more than an hour with both would 1) know already and 2) only need the first half of this sentence as sufficient reference.

Bronn Cocktail

I agree with this but what must back this up is the game being systematically rigorous, tight and fair. Dialing up the difficulty on Skyrim, for example, just leads to frustration with the balance and reward of the underling combat system. Another example; RDR2, which I appreciate in many many ways, would be deeply unsatisfying to play with Sekiro's balance between health and enemy damage because the loose controls and basic gunplay would lead to you dying and feeling like it's not your fault. Sekiro is often punishingly difficult and perhaps the curve is too steep. But (and I say this with two bosses to go) you can succeed in the game through mastering its systems as designed.

LB is a massive early game challenge but this is not unusual. Cleric Beast, Papa G and Capra Demon all come to mind - immensely challenging if you don't cheese or summon. DS3 throws Iudex Gundyr at you before you've even faced a proper enemy! The first three of those all took me at least the same amount of learning as LB. Just because you found her difficult doesn't make her unusually bad game design.

Have you beaten a boss at the top of Ashina Castle yet?

The kind of skills (deflection, aggression, counters) you get from learning how to beat Gen A help with Orin and vice versa. For that reason cheesing bosses/areas is generally a bad idea for when you suddenly can't anymore!

More than a friend, maybe?

Seven Uruk-hai

Don't worry about. I'd had a few drinks and was quite obviously overstating my case and deserved every neg I woke up to. I do still maintain that the notion of "gameplay" is incredibly problematic and it's probably such an ambiguous concept that we might as well throw it out entirely in favour of some more specific notions around ease of control, consistency of systems etc. I can completely understand objections to, say, RDR2 on this basis although they are overstated. I find descriptions of gameplay as being "stuck in the past" very confusing, because there are plenty of games throughout history that controlled beautifully and plenty that didn't.

"Gameplay" is such an obviously redundant and outdated notion in the era of The Witness, Journey, etc. Pressing buttons at the right time is limited in its meaningfulness. Get over it. EDIT: I obviously don't mean to say the method and fluidity of interaction is not part of games, because it can be disconcerting and disconnecting to their detriment. This is exactly where the discussions around RDR2 are at their most interesting rather than banal; how controls etc. are supportive or not of the overall direction of the game.

This isn't really that funny.

Not sure if anyone has commented on this, but the way in which you turn up for a mission apparently for one character only to be (sometimes almost immediately) dragged into something else is a fantastic touch and gives an impressive sense of tension and instability. You never know when the next escalation, next fight, next move of camp is coming.

Pretty much. GTA V was similar IIRC? You'd normally pick up a character in media res.

I'm not sure I've ever actually had to use the R2 to aim control. I use L1 to draw my weapon then use L2 to aim instead. Am I missing something or opportunities by doing things this way?

For an October release you numpty.