It's not even REMOTELY fair to say that this game is a "lower quality clone" of RDR2. It's.... A different game. It plays differently.
I'd say, in a lot of respects, it delivers the "Wild West cowboy gunslinger fantasy" MUCH better. For example, when I shoot a guy in the head, he reacts like how I'd expect a person to realistically react, rather than the weird drunk person in water glitched death animation #467 in RDR2. ALL the guns feel great. John Marston feels like a much more believable, scrappier, more rugged and uncompromising protagonist than Arthur in a lot of ways.
Much snappier controls, much more manageable install size, much better performance on ANY system over RDR2 (sometimes RDR2 will give you 200 FPS, sometimes it will barely struggle to reach 70-90, it depends on its mood or how it's feeling that day.)
It's incredibly easy to farm skills, money, guns, ammo and upgrades in RDR2 to the point you become unstoppably OP VERY early. It isn't quite the case in this game, earning all that power feels a lot more earned.
Also, this is a much more lighthearted game tone-wise, believe it or not. RDR2 lays it on thick that like, murdering and killing is bad.... In this game there's a lot more "here's some bad guys, enjoy killing them" and far less of "your enemy is actually just exactly like you and you're the bad guy and you're killing and murdering often people not as bad as yourself and is it really all worth it and will all these bad deeds matter in the end", which is a very modernist sort of take on the Spaghetti Western rather than the traditional sort of "yeehaw cowboy woohoo" kind of vibe this game goes for.
There's benefits to both. If you're a story kind of person, you will enjoy RDR2 much more than this game, this game doesn't take its story quite to heart so much. If you enjoy gameplay, I FEEL like you will enjoy this game a BIT more. The shooting is snappier, the horse riding is far better, everything feels far snappier than Arthur's sort of "I'm on ice permanently and morbidly obese and I just ate 400 burritos I feel really bloated" sort of movement style, where everything is HEAVY and takes TIME.
I would NOT say this game is NOT "worth playing". It's a fantastic story nonetheless, it is STILL motion capture performed by Rob Wiethoff and I feel endeared to John Marston in general a fair bit more than Arthur, even though I love Arthur. I just can't take Arthur seriously as a sort of "evil outlaw" when John's voice alone sells me on it.
I can totally buy RDR1 John in cutscene and out of cutscene, I CANNOT say the same for Arthur in RDR2.
