As a few of you may know, I've been attempting a rifle only run of rdr2 for the past few months(I tried to do all the side quests for some reason, now it's basically my main run of the game). Needless to say it was an interesting challenge that definitely caused the game to bug out towards the epilogue, but here's how it went.
Chapter 1:
I didn't count this chapter of the game for the most part because it was nearly impossible to get a rifle and most missions required shooting.
Chapter 2:
This was certainly the most difficult part of the run, as I had to make enough money to buy the Springfield Rifle from store or npc robberies. I definitely lost a lot of honor in this process, but managed to get it back up eventually. I had only used my revolver thrice, once to attack the legendary bear after it got the jump on me and twice was when I tried stealing a coach and I misclicked the trigger. It was in this chapter that I managed to get the most useful gun of the run: the bolt action rifle. I definitely loved the higher ammo capacity and damage(I think it has more damage than the springfield).
Chapter 3:
Virtually no problems with this chapter besides the required stealth segments
Chapter 4:
This was a little more difficult, but I managed to disarm a dude in the first Guarma mission to get his rifle. The only problem I had was failing a mission and not checking to see if I had my rifle equipped, I had accidentally killed a few people with a repeater.
Chapter 5:
I can't remember having any problems here at all
Chapter 6:
This chapter was going so great until I decided to mess around by killing a ton of people with my revolvers and returning to a previous save where I didn't technically kill anyone with my revolvers. Once I did this, it was really hard to get back into the flow of only using rifles, so around the end of the chapter I had practically abandoned the challenge.
Epilogue:
I had totally abandoned the challenge after the mission where you clear out hanging dog ranch, at that point it didn't matter to me what gun I used anymore.
Notable bugs:
Chair getting destroyed for no reason while eating a meal from a saloon
Invisible horse riding from lawmen
A shopkeeper who didn't care at all that I pointed my gun at him, and even let me buy something from the shelf after I did that
Glitched killcams(one's camera went through the floor)
People bugging out on their stools at the Valentine saloon
Random rotten boar spawning on the side of the road during the Fenton
Squatter shooting his own friend who ran in front of him when John got them off his
Textures not loading within the Saint Denis Mayor's mansion for a brief moment
Javier and Reverend Swanson sitting in the same chair at once
Final takes:
I definitely learned a lot about using one type of gun for an entire story run and had a ton of fun. I'll definitely be reattempting this run in a much more serious manner, where I won't allow many screw ups m, and I definitely feel like it's possible with my newfound knowledge and ideas of how it should be done(besides the missions where stealth attacks are required, we don't talk about those).
