4/5 ★ – Dima064's review of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Completed as of writing this review: Base Game with some optional things After beating GTA III almost a year ago, I can see a major improvement in GTA: Vice City by being a better, more fun and more diverse game. The missions, the story, the gameplay, the characters, everything is better. However, what I think of GTA III, the same can be said for GTA: Vice City: you can look at it only in retrospect, because you can see it being an improvement of GTA III's gameplay, but each game after overcomes it in my opinion (with some exceptions). I can see how Rockstar tried to do the best they can with the technology they had back in the days, as the cutscenes look cinematic enough and cinematography really makes you feel like you're watching a movie, but the facial expressions are really hit-and-miss most of the time. Sometimes even the eyes were disappearing from the face and I could see through them. And that's not all. 40% of the base game I was solving a puzzle on what the game wants me to do to progress. It does a terrible job at telling what to do after you complete Love Fist missions. And you could say "Just look up a guide or google it.", but when the only way you can make a game perfect for you, is by looking up a guide on how to beat it without itself telling you or at least giving a hint - that's a bad game design. But still, that didn't kill my opinion about the game. Sure it was tedious as hell, but what's in the base story is what sells it. I can see why people liked it over the years, but it also has pills, that are hard to swallow. I recommend it to everybody, who hasn't beaten it, but also likes other GTA games. Make sure to install a ton of mods though, as the PC port is bad for today's standards.