Disclaimer: I played only the single-player, so my review won't mention anything about the online component of the game.

TL;DR: Even though the story is considerably weaker than both GTA IV and San Andreas, GTA V is still a brilliant masterpiece, and definitely recommended.

Now, here are the positives and negatives:

+ The story doesn't have the impact of GTA IV or San Andreas, but it still has enough depth to be engaging. Going through the story mode with three different protagonists is a somewhat unique experience, as not many games do that.

+ The graphics are incredible for a 3 year old game. And I didn't even install any graphic enhancers. I have a GTX 1080 and with everything max'd, the visuals are breath-taking. What impressed me most is how real, how life-like everything looked. It enhances the atmosphere greatly.

+ Speaking of atmosphere, Rockstar does it again. They have created a masterfully crafted, mind-blowingly detailed, living, breathing world. From the sound of cooling metal after you drive a vehicle for a long time to the customisation options in your cell-phone, the world is full of details. I can't even begin to guess how much time they spent designing Los Santos.

+ Incredible, top-notch voice acting. Every single person in the game, even the pedestrians, will make you feel like you are listening to actual human beings talking real time, instead of studio-recorded voice files. No other game I've played has this level of quality voice-acting.

+ The radio and TV shows. You can spend hours listening to/watching them. They are that good.

+ The game offers so many options that you can tweak almost every aspect of the game. The Settings menu is just huge.

+ The game doesn't just consist of the story mode. There are tons of activities you can do all around Los Santos. Even after you finish the story, you can keep playing for at least 50-60 hours.



- The story lacks the impact of both GTA IV (and its superb DLC The Ballad of Gay Tony) and San Andreas. It lacks the personal touch those games had. I couldn't really care about either Michael or Trevor (I actually hated every minute we played as Trevor). The only person I was interested in was Franklin, and he is the least focused-on protagonist. Niko's past haunted him all throughout the game, and CJ had an odyssey filled with loss, grief, betrayal and twists of luck. There is no deep story here. We just follow a "from rags to riches" story, with no special twists or surprises. The end of the story was definitely not cathartic like GTA IV or San Andreas was. Hell, even Vice City had a more impactful ending.

- There isn't enough information about some of the missions before you start them and you get bad results that you could've easily avoided if you read a walkthrough. For example, whatever you do, leave the Lester assassination missions after the main storyline, or you won't be able to 100% the game because you won't have enough money to buy all the properties. Those missions can earn you enormous amounts of cash IF you finish the main story first. Also, towards the end of the main story, there is a mission during which a wrong decision may cost you almost 20 million dollars. There are a few other missions like this where you have no warning whatsoever, and the wrong choice creates a lot of headache for you down the road.

- There are some optimization problems. Even with a i7 8700, 16 GB DDR4 RAM and a GTX 1080, I had FPS drops more often than I'd tolerate. The problem seemed to get better after a driver update, but still persisted.

All in all, this is one of the best games to come out in the last 5 years. I definitely recommend it. Even though the story feels a little lacklustre compared to the previous games in the franchise, it's still a masterpiece.