An odd sidenote in Rockstar's development history that often seems to go overlooked when compared to its more sequeled brethren.
As formulaic as Rockstar games can appear, there's a fascinating path of systemic experimentation and design that can be traced through a couple of their games. This more simulational slant started with San Andreas, continued with Bully and ultimately culminated in Red Dead Redemption 2, with their other GTA games leaning far closer to their traditional open world sandboxes that eschew the simulation aspects of these three. In this sense, I find Bully particularly fascinating.
I mean, really, what other game places you in a school and expects you to actually attend classes, be in uniform, get a part-time job while also trying to find time to progress the main story? (for the sake of argument pretend persona doesn't exist) Bully encourages the player to engage with its full range of simulation and in doing so becomes a masterwork in encouraging the player to fully take on Jimmy's own role and schedule. For example, I found myself sticking to a pretty strict schedule most days; wake up, put on a cool outfit, get to the school and run an errand before morning class, run around or do another errand during lunch and finally taking the afternoon class before moving on to the story missions and ultimately heading to bed.
None of this is required by the game; you can decide what order and when to do any activity, but the way that the game lightly encourages the player to fully engage with these systems I found to be extremely effective; each class you go to presents you with a bonus or an additional skill and skipping class will give you a small wanted status that can lead to some very unfortunate results when doing missions.
Despite its age and some pretty annoying graphical glitches, this all led to the game being a far more immersive and engaging experience than I had ever remembered it being.
Beyond all that, the story is exactly what one would expect. There are definitely some aspects of the game that have not aged well, particularly missions involving non-consensual photos and the thievery of undergarments, but most of the game is relatively harmless in its sense of humor. Additionally, I was pleasantly surprised at how mature the game could be when addressing some of the more serious topics at hand. Both of the aforementioned missions have followup missions that see Jimmy seeing the consequences of his actions. Is it perfect, and would I rather the game have not included them in the first place? Absolutely, but the attempt at transcending the initial, admittedly tasteless, jokes was somewhat appreciated.

Surprisingly decent and somehow manages to be less transphobic than the other open-world school game, Hogwarts Legacy.