A spectacular cultured 80s crime thriller mayhem.

Despite being my second GTA game that I've ever played, with GTA 5 being my first, it has aged mostly like juicy fine wine.

Sure the lack of checkpoints, a couple of jankyness elements and the factual meme that Tommy can't swim is real unfortunate, however unlike GTA 3, it's much more manageable which makes the game more of a test of knowledge and skill, instead of janky RNG that severely plagued GTA 3.

Besides that Vice City is the embodiment of chaos, passion and atmosphere.
Tommy Vercetti is a incredible and well defined protagonist who never fails to make me laugh.
The other characters notably Rosenberg, Ricardo and Lance were all memorable in they own ways.

Despite being a PS2, the game visually holds up very well with beautiful lighting, decently presented character models and well designed cities and locations that is filled with life.
A major improvement over GTA 3's basic and repetitive visuals.

The radio stations are some of the best that the GTA franchise has offer, filled with memorable 80s bangers and top musical hits of the 80s.
Not to mention, the voice is and to this day incredible and they all did a great job at capturing their respective characters.

GTA Vice City is at first glance similar to GTA 3, however this time, the difficulty whenever your doing story missions or doing a 6 star rampage in free roam, it's more fair and scaled.

Failing missions or getting wasted feels like natural consequence of a player poor planning, instead of poor game design and janky elements in GTA 3.
Police AI is significantly improved and gives you more a fighting chance especially in higher wanted levels, although the FBI and the Army can still delete you, if your not careful enough.

While not the perfect GTA game, Vice City is a beautiful charming effort that I adore with my heart.