I still prefer San Andreas but this was still a really damn good game. Niko at first was a meh protagonist but they really develop him into a much more sympathetic and sarcastic yet brooding man with a dark past and his Slavic accent was just fun to hear. While the story has a lot of filler it does do a good job of immersing you in it's world which is helped by it's really strong voice acting and writing. However the whole morality system where you make decisions on outcomes such as if an individual should be spared or not didn't really affect much in terms of dialogue instead of one choice that changes which ending you get but it was still a neat little thing which made me repeat saves out of curiosity of how dialogue would change .It also does suffer from some tonal issues with the story being a much darker tale of revenge compared to other GTA games yet still having some characters that feel like cartoon caricatures. Even the missions while there are a lot of amazing standouts like the heist mission that pays homage to the movie heat can sometimes just feel like you're doing the same thing again and you really feel that when they make you drive through the same bridges how many times.

Into more of the gameplay there is a steep curve if you're accustomed to the sixth gen GTA games, the vehicle handling took a lot to get used too since they attempted to make it a lot more realistic and was at times pretty frustrating to control with turns needing pre determined slow down to avoid major collisions, you do however learn how to apply brakes more to master quicker turns which was satisfying to get better at. The physics system was really awesome and gave things a lot more weight and risk as well, momentum playing a part in knocking down objects and letting your cars fly was a really fun risky tradeoff for how much more dangerous high speed crashes are in this game. The way the cars realistically get damaged was also technically really fascinating. I do prefer the more arcadey and smooth feeling of how San Andreas's vehicles handled (besides the horrid planes) but it still gets points for trying something new and doing it well.

The shooting also is something that gets a major overhaul with a cover system which impressively allows use to hide for cover behind any appropriately sized object. There is a level of jank to it but it works really well and makes shootouts a lot more fun.

Onto the main attraction, Liberty City itself, it does lack in visual variety compared to San Andreas having mostly cities and watered down suburbs to navigate through but it does make up for it for the sheer amount of things you have to do. Bowling and billiards are implemented nicely well and the social interaction system while can get a little tiresome does immerse you in the world. The NPCs do have a lot more character and things going on as well, they do have their moments of jank AI but you'd be surprised how many unique actions you can spot them doing as you pass them by. This game's world at night especially the central city area still looks absolutely gorgeous all these years later, soaking that view in on a helicopter is really cool.