Everything about how this game handles inventory management and item use is weird. Actions are goofy too. For example, on PS4 you hold down triangle to hitch your horse. But triangle also causes you to dismount. So if the horse moves slightly while you're trying to hitch, you'll actually dismount and then need to remount to start over. Also, when you're not in combat, you hit R2 to get out your gun, which makes it aim-able. But R2 is also hip-fire. So sometimes you'll just want to draw your weapon, but you actually fire off a shot because the environment was one that caused you to auto-draw. These are bad design decisions flowing for trying to map too many actions onto a controller.
Another complaint is getting caught committing crimes. I'm riding along in the middle of nowhere, and another guy comes along on horseback. Now, the only reasonable thing to do here is to murder him in cold blood and steal all of his stuff, which of course I do, and then I ride off. After I'm gone, a witness discovers the body, but what do I care? I've already left and the witness didn't see me do anything. Doesn't matter -- somehow I pick up a bounty anyway. This really limits your ability to play as a ####.
Finally, because this is a Rockstar game it apparently has to have some terrible checkpointing. Last night I did a mission that involved killing off a dozen or so gang members. No problem. Then I looted all the bodies. While wandering around making sure I looted everyone, I wandered a little too far and failed the mission because I left the area. No big deal, just restart the checkpoint and on we go. But the checkpoint put me back at the beginning of the fight, so I had to kill everybody again. Who checkpoints a mission that way?
None of these even resemble game-breaking problems. Just little blemishes on what seems like a really good title. I'm not sure why Bethesda and Ubisoft can get these sorts of things right but Rockstar can't, but you kind of know to expect a little fidgetiness in Rockstar games.
On the plus side, I originally cringed when I saw the "cores" system, that you had to eat and sleep regularly, and that you could get cold or hot or gain or lose weight. I normally hate those types of systems even in RPGs and especially in action-oriented games like this one. But so far I've found that they actually work pretty well once you get going. They give you a reason to loot, hunt, camp, and visit towns. And they slow the game down, which fits the pacing that this game is going for.