I think I found a new appreciation for the game I never had before. First being the approach to satire through the perspective of an immigrant who gets to see THE worst parts of American culture, especially in a town like Liberty City where you're surrounded by mean spirited egotistical people, peak cynicism and second, how the tech feels like in between of what the team was already experienced with the PS2, and having that extra horsepower of the newly then next gen consoles to go wild with physics and systems-driven simulations from NPCs to enemy behaviour and more

It also gave me more appreciation for GTA V because both games, while on the surface are the same, game design wise they're fundamentally different, from mission design, customization, combat, exploration, etc

The one thing I hate about it tho is the mission design. It's very GTA 3-coded, where it's either "go here and shoot x" or "drive from point A to B

The story also dragged on for too long. I looked at the stats and in total it's 93 missions compared to V's 74, and with V I'll defend the lenght cuz the missions are so fun and varied, but 4 felt like it could've ended within 3 to 4 hours after the Three Leaf Clover mission honestly, the rest felt like fodder besides the most important ones