San Andreas may not fully resolve every single little issue I had with 3 and Vice City but rather instead more than makes up for those shortcomings by creating an immersive experience with a scale so ambitious and insane that not only am I in disbelief of this thing being originally made for the PS2, I'm still in awe of it playing for the first time nearly two decades after its original release in a modern era of video games with sequels and competitors that have long since succeeded it. I'm not even sure Rockstar themselves could ever fully recreate an experience like San Andreas, with a level of understanding on how to make the player feel like they've gone on this massive journey with these gradual curveballs both in story intermixed with gameplay in how they progress and discover every new element of the map, the places and objectives that missions take you on, and the characters that you still learn to care about as much as CJ does on the wild ride he's thrown out on. Where 3 and Vice City were concerned about creating a sandbox that players could just drive and shoot stuff in for whatever weird violent sprees the player wanted to go on, San Andreas is concerned about making you want to better CJ as a character including lifestyle elements and minigames that, as simple and jank as they can be, give crucial variety and spice that was desperately needed.
I think even more importantly for me, and what makes San Andreas still stand out to this day among Rockstar's catalog, is just how innocent it is. There may be some of Rockstar's trademark cynicism and satire without a doubt, but it doesn't plague the game beyond a small smattering of surface level side character personalities and radio humor. Gone is the run down dreariness of 3's Liberty City or the pop culture referential appeal of Vice City's 80s excess and all the commentary found within both, and instead is a world and story where the characters are treated with genuine attention and time, and with a level of self-respect even towards clearly insane out there characters like goofy weed jesus Truth or the conspiratorial clearly making shit up Toreno. It felt like Rockstar would be winking at the player knowing that yeah, the insane batshit stuff you will eventually get up to in these missions is clearly nuts and silly, but without then rolling their eyes and going "wow isn't this cuh-RA-zy" like how I remember GTA V eventually becoming. San Andreas wants you to be immersed within its world, and it truly believes in the player coming along for a ride that they're meant to be having fun on even when things get serious. For the number of times where I would irritated with some stinky missions or the still occasional crapshoot AI behavior and spawning, there would be hours of just even quietly enjoying myself riding through the country-side listening to radio stations that were clearly custom tailored to that location and tone before riding out into the next city beyond for the next mission as the sun was setting and the dust clouds rolled in as I crossed that bridge into the desert. And for a game almost 20 years old now, it still remains unparalleled in that memorable experience.
(I just also wish that Rockstar would have done a better job of preserving the original PS2 experience, and not just because of Definitive Edition's unfaithful visuals and bugs; the original PC port is frankly hot garbage and is more needlessly fiddly to mod than it really should be. I don't have the greatest guide on hand to fix the ports issues, but bare minimum downgrade the game's version and try to install SilentPatch and SkyGfx to fix bugs and restore the PS2 visuals, then keep the game locked to 30FPS because important scripts and physics were tied to the framerate. I also wish I didn't have to eventually give up and enable cheats right at the very end of the game to finish the territory stuff because the game kept crashing and making me lose hours of progress right before I was able to do the final mission. I'm sure emulating the PS2 version is an option, but it also feels like a lame copout with its own issues. Someday I'll try DE for real to see how it fares these days, but take this as a small cautionary warning if you're on PC.)
I think even more importantly for me, and what makes San Andreas still stand out to this day among Rockstar's catalog, is just how innocent it is. There may be some of Rockstar's trademark cynicism and satire without a doubt, but it doesn't plague the game beyond a small smattering of surface level side character personalities and radio humor. Gone is the run down dreariness of 3's Liberty City or the pop culture referential appeal of Vice City's 80s excess and all the commentary found within both, and instead is a world and story where the characters are treated with genuine attention and time, and with a level of self-respect even towards clearly insane out there characters like goofy weed jesus Truth or the conspiratorial clearly making shit up Toreno. It felt like Rockstar would be winking at the player knowing that yeah, the insane batshit stuff you will eventually get up to in these missions is clearly nuts and silly, but without then rolling their eyes and going "wow isn't this cuh-RA-zy" like how I remember GTA V eventually becoming. San Andreas wants you to be immersed within its world, and it truly believes in the player coming along for a ride that they're meant to be having fun on even when things get serious. For the number of times where I would irritated with some stinky missions or the still occasional crapshoot AI behavior and spawning, there would be hours of just even quietly enjoying myself riding through the country-side listening to radio stations that were clearly custom tailored to that location and tone before riding out into the next city beyond for the next mission as the sun was setting and the dust clouds rolled in as I crossed that bridge into the desert. And for a game almost 20 years old now, it still remains unparalleled in that memorable experience.
(I just also wish that Rockstar would have done a better job of preserving the original PS2 experience, and not just because of Definitive Edition's unfaithful visuals and bugs; the original PC port is frankly hot garbage and is more needlessly fiddly to mod than it really should be. I don't have the greatest guide on hand to fix the ports issues, but bare minimum downgrade the game's version and try to install SilentPatch and SkyGfx to fix bugs and restore the PS2 visuals, then keep the game locked to 30FPS because important scripts and physics were tied to the framerate. I also wish I didn't have to eventually give up and enable cheats right at the very end of the game to finish the territory stuff because the game kept crashing and making me lose hours of progress right before I was able to do the final mission. I'm sure emulating the PS2 version is an option, but it also feels like a lame copout with its own issues. Someday I'll try DE for real to see how it fares these days, but take this as a small cautionary warning if you're on PC.)