What's everyone's favourite town in this game? For me so far I think it's Strawberry. It's got this cozy feeling about it, reminds me of Skyrim. Not just because it's nestled close to mountains, but because the frame rate drops to sub-10 FPS. Just like the good old PS3 days... :|
I will always have a soft spot for Blackwater, although it depresses me that you can't visit it until the epilogues. I get this strong tinge of nostalgia when walking around it at night. It also has, IIRC, poker and blackjack, plus dominoes just on the outskirts of town.
Exploring Blackwater and West Elizabeth/New Austin is able to transport me immediately back to 2010 playing RDR1 and just how amazing those areas felt. I also really love how wide open all of the terrain is there, which is something that the rest of RDR2 really isn't, it's much more claustrophobic and dense. This was likely a technical limitation that drove design decisions in RDR1, which iso why the landscapes of most of the game are pretty consistent throughout (Tall Trees is really the only area from RDR1 that is different landscape wise, and appropriately it's also the only area that really suffered from poor technical performance).
I love walking around Blackwater, love standing on the dock at night and looking out over Flat Iron lake. I love going into the bars and playing poker, I love that your residence isn't far from Blackwater, it really, really brings me back to RDR1. It's just a shame you can't get over there at all with Arthur. RDR1 was also a time in my life when I was young, single/not committed, living on my own, going to bars all the time and then going home and playing videogames till 4am and then sleeping till noon without any responsibility...... Now I'm old, married, kids, responsibilities, and if I can escape to go out to the bar once in a while, I usually can't have more than a couple beers, and I definitely can't play past 1am because my toddler will be awake at 6 (if I'm lucky!) and I'll be on dad duty. OF course, I wouldn't trade it for the world, and also I strongly associate RDR2 story mode with my daughter being a newborn/infant (Sleepless nights she'd fall asleep on me in the living room and I'd go ... play cards in Valentine with headphones on or explore the map)... But, Blackwater oddly takes me back as much as any videogame can. I wish Mexico was explorable for the same reason.
For cities in RDR2 proper that you can visit with Arthur, I'll probably settle on Valentine or maybe Rhodes. Valentine has it all for the most part, and everything is near by. Saint Denis is obviously a marvel but the story is getting so depressing at that point, that you kinda feel (somehow) the weight of that oppressive, humid air, plus Arthur's condition, like... taking a toll on how I think about the area. Mixed in with the weather where it's almost never clear but usually some amount of fog and humidity, or storms, and the smoke, it *feels* claustrophobic to me.
Valentine still gives me that sort of "Fresh country air" feel to it.
I love Strawberry too for that reason, but I just wish it had more. I didn't know that Strawberry is a dry-town, too, that's part of the lore. It's why there's no bars and saloons, they're trying to build it up as a vacation destination for wealthy do-gooders... ANd of course, it's the place where you run into Micah Bell and start that whole saga, so it's appropriate that he'd be locked up there.
I wish they did more with Annesburg and the towns in the north east. They're fine, just nothing to do really.