Ten years ago I’ve experienced Grand Theft Auto V for the first time. My opinion on it was very positive, but somewhat underwhelmed – not by the quality of the game itself, but rather by how evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, it all felt. Again, it wasn’t really much of a fault of a game that it couldn’t quite follow up on the previous entries (especially the first three 3D games) in terms of their inescapable impact on the entire game industry and defined an entire genre. But either way, in 2015 I felt very pleased with the game, but not too excited. Now with the Enhanced version of the game being out, I’ve decided to revisit the entire series with this new playthrough of GTA V being the final title. And surprisingly, I’ve found myself loving the game a lot more than I did ten years ago.
Let’s start with covering what this “Enhanced” version is all about. GTA V was originally released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2013 and a year later received an “enhanced” version on PS4 and Xbox One, and half a year later also on PC. Then in 2020 the current generation of consoles has received the “Expanded & Enhanced” version of the game, that was probably called this way to avoid confusion with the previous port that was already “enhanced”. And this version featured some performance improvements and new visual elements, including ray tracing for some aspects of the game.
Now in 2025 PC gets that release, with a few additional visual improvements, except called Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, which surely adds to the confusion. Nonetheless, this version of the game looks incredible, runs exceedingly well and probably serves as a technical preview of what the next entry in the franchise is going to look like. However, it also clearly switches focus to the extremely profitable GTA Online section of the game, as it is the first tab of the game you see when you open it, requiring you to switch a few tabs to play the story. Which is all I cared about and I haven’t even launched GTA Online once. I’ve heard good things about it (and lots of bad things about Rockstar’s greed), did try it a bit ten years ago on the old version and it’s just not for me. I heard it has a few downgrades in terms of PC experience in comparison to the old version, so if you care about the multiplayer you might want to research this bit more. But personally I couldn’t care less.
What I cared about was re-experiencing the singleplayer portion of the game that not only feels great on its own, but especially enjoyable after going through the previous entries. Sure, it does lack in some aspects by making things a bit too convenient or finally providing you with cars that you permanently own, motivating you to use those more rather than participating in the titular grand theft auto-ing. But to me that’s a boon and the game feels like the culmination of the entire series and even other titles Rockstar has worked on over the years. Everything feels “just right”. Aspects of non-linearity are beautifully interchanged with the infamous Rockstar scripted nature of missions, to the point where the scripted aspects almost never stick out and are easy to ignore, unlike the previous games. Going in and out of missions, switching between three playable characters that have unique abilities feels seamless and fun. Return of the skill system that now feels fun and not annoying as it used to in GTA: SA. Vehicles control “just right”, having some weight to them, but no longer being stressful to drive as they did in GTA IV.
The city feels alive unlike everything that Rockstar has done before. And the developers were also smart to address the claustrophobic design of the roads from GTA IV, where taxi was always faster and more comfortable to get, than trying to navigate the narrow sprawling streets of Liberty City with its constant high traffic. Now everything is very wide and you can have a lot of traffic, while also easily sliding between moving cars. The cop system is reworked to be far more fun than it was in the previous game, despite the cops being more aggressive and the crazy over the top elements like tanks and attack helicopters returning (and it’s 5 stars instead of 6 for the first time since the introduction of the system).
The mission design ranges from simple, but fun, to extremely exciting and over the top with cool switching between characters during the mission. Heists can play out differently depending on your choices. Random world events don’t feel too generic and may lead to surprising consequences. Random stories you encounter on the map occasionally are as interesting as main story missions.
This is also the first game in the series to make a genuinely big impactful push for a specifically written soundtrack instead of relying on licensed music. It plays during many missions, including when you’re on foot, and even when simply exploring if you turn the vehicle radio off the ambient soundtrack will gently fade in. It’s really good and it’s a real shame that the developers decided to really treat it as ambience in a modern way, so it’s often composed and mixed to be wallpaper, rather then be as memorable as the themes for GTA I-III or IV. I hope, next time Rockstar make an even bigger emphasis on music composed specifically for the game.
So, with all this praise I’m giving the game, there must be some negatives too, right? Yeah, there are. The story, as I’ve noted ten years ago, feels a bit stale and not particularly exciting. It’s not that it’s bad, rather, the “issue” here is that GTA V instead banks on telling many small stories of the three key characters of the game without a real huge overarching plot. On the plus side, it does make every “episode” you experience feel good on its own without creating huge conflicts with whatever other “episode” you will choose to experience next. On the downside, the only big plot progression of the game that you feel is how the relationships between the main characters change over the course of the game, which is a bit too subtle to feel as impactful as, say, the blunt but efficient “you owe money to the mafia and are building a criminal empire to make money” plot in Vice City.
Sure, GTA V might be somewhat underwhelming and more evolutionary than even its predecessor. And it really is a shame that the absurd profitability of the online section meant that this game never got any singleplayer expansions or DLCs (even though, at least one was planned). But it’s also easily the most fun GTA game I’ve played, I loved revisiting it, especially now that it looks even more incredible. And was a bit sad to having finished everything I wanted to do for now. Unless what you really want in this type of game is good plot, you simply can’t go wrong with playing Grand Theft Auto V if you haven’t already.