I really did enjoy the writing a lot. It's witty and does comedy perfectly. The voice acting is great. Rockstar has always been masters at dialogue and voice acting. But the actual gameplay, it was cool on paper... Having an in game time and having the world change overtime is ambitious for the time. But the missions simply werent that fun to me, they felt basic and some were extremely annoying. The biggest sin is if you fail a mission, you immediatly get booted out and have to go back to the mission location again. Sometimes that can be really far away... and due to the time system, sometimes the mission will outright disappear until it's the right time again. This could be patched with a save system that allows you to save anywhere so you could just reload easily, but save points are scattered quite far apart. Not to mention, the PC port is questionable at best, as I had a crashing issue that would show up occassionally, which made the saving system even more frustrating. It's not just my PC as there have been similar reports of random crashing. I could never fix it. I think this game deserves a lot of respect, and laid the groundwork for future Rockstar games well, but I just didnt jive with it unfortunately.

This is easily one of my favorite Rockstar games, the story is great and paced well and fits the school environment. Speaking of environment the world building is great, all the small fun activities make the game's map feel way better than the GTA games which are relatively empty. The soundtrack can get repetitive however I personally never got tired of the songs that played while doing various activities. despite this being a PS2 game the controls are still nice and crisp. Overall an amazing game that aged pretty well.

Com certeza um dos melhores jogos de mundo aberto que já joguei, prefiro ele até do que muitos jogos da própria Rockstar. Dá pra perceber que Bully foi feito com muito carinho, tudo é caprichado, vivo e orgânico nesse jogo. O mundo é um dos mais vivos e naturais que já vi em um jogo até hoje, os NPCs estão constantemente interagindo um com os outros fazendo diversas coisas diferentes, tipo brigando, conversando, discutindo e várias outras coisas. Eles parecem vivos de verdade, tem uma rotina, comportamento único e interagem de formas diferentes seja com você ou com os outros NPCs á volta. A cidade é extremamente orgânica, como eu disse, todos os NPCs tem uma rotina e seguem ela todo dia. Durante o dia, a cidade tem mais gente andando e fazendo coisas e não tem muitos carros passando, já de noite, o número de pessoas diminui bastante, o que mais tem nas ruas da cidade são os carros, policiais e alguns NPCs que andam de noite no geral. Cada parte da cidade e cada grupo de NPCs interagem de uma forma diferente com você e tudo acontecendo ao redor. A parte de Bullworth que fica na esquerda da escola é uma área com pessoas mais ricas e sofisticadas, inclusive, é a área dominada pelos mauricinhos, os NPCs riquinhos do jogo. A parte de cima da cidade é um lugar mais violento e cheia de roubos e brigas acontecendo o tempo todo, é a área dominada pelos greasers, esse grupo de NPCs quase sempre vão brigar com o Jimmy assim que o verem por perto e também roubar qualquer veículo que você esteja usando. A parte a direita da cidade que só é desbloqueada perto do fim do jogo, sendo a parte mais "pobre" da cidade, não tem muitas casas, várias fábricas e os NPCs são hostis com o Jimmy igual aos greasers. É impressionante como cada coisa interage e convive no mundo de Bully, eu me sentia cada vez mais imerso no jogo o quanto mais eu jogava. As aulas e atividades do jogo são bem divertidas (ignorando geografia); NPCs vem constantemente atrás do Jimmy pedindo ajuda para resolver coisas rápidas pra eles, são tipo side-quests; a história é bastante boa e satisfatória, sendo que esse nem é o foco principal do jogo, a trama consegue ser envolvente com o jogador e os personagens, trazendo missões muito divertidas de se fazer, quase não me vi sendo frustrado por alguma missão desse jogo de tão divertidas que são; a trilha sonora é simplesmente incrível, é variada e muito memorável, com certeza a melhor da Rockstar até hoje. Esse jogo é incrível em quase todos os aspectos e eu nem citei metade do que ele tem aqui, com certeza um dos meus favoritos da Rockstar só talvez atrás do GTA San Andreas (não joguei Red Dead Redemption), uma nota 9 sólida.

My first playthrough as a grown adult I believe.

Considered docking this for the cringe Rockstar humor. Although I do think this game is pretty funny at times. The big punchlines (HUHUH INCEST!) aren't funny but the random NPC banter is good shit. The open world is still one of my favorites. The random chaos happening across school campus is hysterical.

I only found 1 mission to be flat out bad/poorly done. Maybe not all compelling and some simply shouldn't have made the cut (ie. the weird pervert ones) but I wasn't struggling. The story's a bit of gibberish because the main character Jimmy Hopkins is a flat out dumb fuck. On one hand his character is embarrassing but on the other it's a unique experience. How often do you play as a complete, bumbling moron? Albeit one who can destroy an entire school with his bare hands.

I feel like I should have more complaints but I thoroughly enjoyed my replay of this game. Alexa play What More Can I Say

'Mischievous school-boy'

Throws firework at a little kid's face, knocking them out cold instantly

Yeah okay Rockstar. Nice psychopath simulator.

a lot to love here, but also found myself constantly wishing for more. i love the way that this game is truly focused on creating a school experience and then expanding to the wider community around the school. the actual worldbuilding here is frankly second to none, though everything is incredibly heightened to fit into the stereotypes of high school, there's a lot of tactility that comes through the town of bullworth and all of the fun stock characters that inhabit it, it's maybe rockstar's most fully realized environment outside of maybe rdr2. i also love the way that the game forces you into following routines, having to go to bed in order to avoid being out late after curfew, trying to get to class on time so as to not be punished for truancy, or even just trying to stick to the school uniform so as to not get unnecessary prefect attention (though unlike my actual high school experience, i never wore the uniform in game lmao). there's very little actual punishment for not following these rules, so players can still tackle the game in whatever way they desire, but even these slight ways of penalizing players go a long way into guiding them towards specific playstyles and roleplay opportunities, personally i found myself never missing class even when on a mission so as to try to become a straight A student though i never wore my uniform and occasionally would stay out late to roam around town. this isn't even to get into all the other things there is to do in this game, with a bunch of different arcade games, races, jobs, collectibles, side missions, and more scattered all across a map that was much bigger than i could have expected. it makes the game almost feel more like the yakuza series than anything else, with it's focus on hand to hand combat and a deep open world allowing the player to get sidetracked at any given time.

even still, i found myself constantly wanting more from the game. part of this is definitely just the fact that the game had to deal with the hardware limitations of the time, but it feels as though it only ever really scratches the surface of what an open world high-school simulator game could be. while there is a romance system in the game it is incredibly bare-bones, acting more as a power up than ever really feeling fleshed out, the faction system also feels mostly just tied to the machinations of the plot rather than ever really reacting to player choices, even the class minigames feel like they're just slightly shy of being really immersive with only five classes to choose from (though this probably could have been rectified by playing scholarship edition instead). it makes me yearn for a sequel, perhaps throw some RPG-style dialogue trees in there to give some more interpersonal depth to an already rich world (or please someone just translate tokimeki memorial on ps1).

i also did just find the actual plot of the game started to drag as it went on longer and longer. while i like a lot of the characters here (especially beatrice, ms. philips, mr. galloway, zoe, pete, and jimmy himself) it never really feels like the narrative is pushing towards anything substantial. it feels as though at times characters forget their histories with jimmy, constantly swapping motivations depending on what the mission needs, and there's very rarely a real sense of seeing characters evolve over time even as the seasons change around them. that's not really to say that the main story here is bad, far from it, just that it doesn't really amount to much in the end when it's overall premise is incredibly strong.

in summation, though i have some faults with it, there isn't really anything else out there like this game, and it's well worth spending some time with it just to inhabit the world it sets up for itself, just hoping rockstar isn't stuck in the GTA 6 mines forever and can maybe think about putting out a follow-up to this incredibly idiosyncratic experience.

It's basically a 3D beat-em-up and it EXCELS at that. Even playing it now the melee combat is incredibly satisfying with hefty, fluid animations that always meld together well.

On top of that, the writing is amazing and the stereotypes are so comical. I'm constantly laughing out loud from the passive NPC dialogue as you walk around.

I also love Gary. He's basically just a kid who's off his ADHD medication and it makes for a fantastic villain for a game like this.

One of my favorite games ever.