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Which Grand Theft Auto game is the best one ever made? Ask that about a crime-action franchise that has been running since the very first game landed in 1997, and you will get wildly different answers depending on who you ask. Plenty of players will tell you Grand Theft Auto V is untouchable, but there is a stubborn contingent insisting that “the human drama in GTA IV is the real peak” or that “nothing has ever matched the freedom of San Andreas.”
The SpotGeeks editorial team scored 10 major entries in the series across four axes — Accessibility, Graphics, Brutality, and Replay Value — on a 100-point scale each, then ranked them by total score. With the next mainline entry, Grand Theft Auto VI, due in November 2026, there has never been a better moment to look back across the whole catalog.
Whether you are a newcomer wondering “which one should I start with?” or a veteran who wants to revisit the back catalog, this scorecard should point you toward the right game.
A high Brutality score means tougher missions and heavier police pressure — which is a plus, not a minus, if you want a game that fights back. Replay Value covers the total package beyond the story missions: side content, freedom, and online components. Graphics were judged by how the game looks in 2026, not by how impressive it was at launch.
*Prices in this article are converted from Japanese yen at ¥153 = US$1 (September 2026 rate).
All 10 Games Compared: The SpotGeeks Scorecard, Four Axes, 100 Points Each
Here is the full four-axis breakdown for all 10 games side by side. The highest Replay Value score goes to Grand Theft Auto V (98), the highest Brutality score to Grand Theft Auto IV (87), and the highest Accessibility score to Grand Theft Auto V again (95) — the numbers make the strength of the modern entries hard to argue with.
| Title | Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GTA V | 95 | 90 | 65 | 98 | 348 |
| GTA IV | 82 | 76 | 87 | 88 | 333 |
| GTA San Andreas | 80 | 55 | 82 | 97 | 314 |
| GTA Vice City | 82 | 52 | 78 | 90 | 302 |
| GTA: EfLC (TBoGT) | 85 | 76 | 70 | 62 | 293 |
| GTA III | 73 | 42 | 80 | 88 | 283 |
| GTA Vice City Stories | 78 | 57 | 72 | 74 | 281 |
| GTA Chinatown Wars | 80 | 58 | 68 | 68 | 274 |
| GTA Liberty City Stories | 73 | 50 | 70 | 72 | 265 |
| GTA 2 | 52 | 28 | 73 | 60 | 213 |
The older games (III, Vice City, San Andreas) inevitably post low Graphics scores, but their Replay Value comes remarkably close to the modern entries. San Andreas in particular lands a 97 in Replay Value — second only to Grand Theft Auto V across the entire series.
No. 1: Grand Theft Auto V — a 98 in Replay Value and the No. 2 Sales Figure on Earth
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95 | 90 | 65 | 98 | 348 |
Released on September 17, 2013, Grand Theft Auto V is a monster: the second best-selling game in history behind only Minecraft, with more than 200 million copies sold as of 2026. Its Metacritic score of 97 is extraordinary, and critics and players alike have never stopped praising it. It is available on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam (the Enhanced edition), and it is still being played heavily in 2026.
The story moves between three protagonists — Michael, Franklin, and Trevor — and it remains the most densely staged narrative the series has ever produced. Franklin’s cool head, Michael’s messy family life, Trevor’s sheer unfiltered madness: the social satire of Los Santos told from those three angles is genuinely cinematic. I can still remember gripping the controller a little tighter during certain missions.
The source of that 98 in Replay Value is GTA Online. Free roam, heists, races, the casino — an effectively endless stream of content that keeps getting updated, which is why players are still showing up more than a decade later. The Enhanced edition on Steam normally runs $29, and drops to around $14 on sale.
- Second best-selling game of all time, with a 97 on Metacritic from an adoring press
- GTA Online gives you a practically bottomless well of things to do
- Superb value at $29 on Steam, or around $14 when it goes on sale
- Brutality of 65 — mission difficulty is on the gentle side, so challenge hunters may be left wanting
- The GTA Online money system leans a little hard on nudging you toward microtransactions
No. 2: Grand Theft Auto IV — a 98 on Metacritic and the Series’ Finest Human Drama
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 82 | 76 | 87 | 88 | 333 |
Released on April 29, 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV scored a 98 on Metacritic and is still talked about as one of the three highest-rated games the site has ever tracked. It pulled in $360 million on day one, setting a record for the fastest-selling entertainment release of its era. Today you can pick it up on Steam as GTA IV: The Complete Edition, which bundles both expansions (TLoD and TBoGT).
Protagonist Niko Bellic arrives in Liberty City as an immigrant from Eastern Europe, caught between the dream and the reality of the land of the free — that premise alone tells you how radically the series pivoted away from its cartoonish roots and toward genuine human drama. Retry points after a failed mission sit uncomfortably far back, and that Brutality score of 87 is no exaggeration. The helicopter fights and high-speed chases will wall you repeatedly, but the rush when you finally clear one is as good as this series gets.
The Complete Edition, with The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned included, is by far the best way to play it. As of 2026, Steam regularly discounts it by 70%, which can bring it down to roughly $7 to $9.
- A 98 on Metacritic — the highest critical score in the series and a landmark in game history
- Brutality of 87, with mission design that genuinely pushes back
- The Steam Complete Edition (often under $10 on sale) includes both expansions
- The story is heavy and bleak — a mismatch if you want a sunnier GTA
- The PC version can be picky about your setup, and optimization is rough on some older hardware
No. 3: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — a 97 in Replay Value and the Peak of the PS2 Open World
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | 55 | 82 | 97 | 314 |
Released in October 2004, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a PS2 legend: a 95 on Metacritic and 27.5 million copies sold, a series record at the time. A gigantic map spanning three cities — Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas — plus systems for muscle, body weight, and skill progression, plus gang turf wars. In 2004, no open world had ever crammed this much variety into a single game.
Its 97 in Replay Value is second only to Grand Theft Auto V across the whole series. Beyond the main missions there are taxi, paramedic, firefighter, and biker side jobs, bike races, flight school, casinos, and even driving a tractor out in farm country. That feeling that “you can do anything in San Andreas” has not faded one bit. Selling 4.5 million copies in its first week sent shockwaves through the industry.
These days the remastered version is part of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, released in 2021, playable on PS4/PS5, Switch, and Steam (though reception was mixed). If you love the feel of the original, hunting down the original release on Steam is a legitimate option.
- A 97 in Replay Value — three cities, character progression, and gang systems add up to staggering volume
- A 95 on Metacritic, still spoken of as the finest game of the PS2 era
- Playable on current hardware via The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
- Graphics of 55 — PS2-era visuals look dated by modern standards
- The Definitive Edition remaster splits opinion, and plenty of players still recommend the original
No. 4: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City — a 90 in Replay Value and a Classic Set in 1980s Miami
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 82 | 52 | 78 | 90 | 302 |
Released in October 2002, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City scored a 95 on Metacritic and sold 17.5 million copies, a masterpiece built around 1980s Miami. Tommy Vercetti, Hawaiian shirt and all, gets dragged into a war between drug outfits in a story soaked in Scarface and Miami Vice homages. It moved 1.4 million copies in its first two days and rattled the industry.
Its greatest asset is atmosphere. The ’80s pop, rock, and hip-hop pouring out of the radio stations is stunningly well curated, and it creates the immersive sense of driving with the windows down and the sea breeze coming in. Cruising a bike along the coastal road produces a “this is what GTA is” feeling that no other game in the series quite replicates. That 90 in Replay Value reflects how the property purchases and business management laid the groundwork for everything that followed.
- A 95 on Metacritic, with a 1980s Miami setting and soundtrack that remain the most immersive in the series
- Property purchases, business management — the blueprint for later GTA systems is all here
- Playable on current hardware via The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
- Graphics of 52 — PS2-era visuals are a hard sell by modern standards
- A handful of missions (the helicopter flying, especially) are unreasonably difficult
No. 5: Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City (The Ballad of Gay Tony) — an 85 in Accessibility and an Underrated Action-First Expansion
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 85 | 76 | 70 | 62 | 293 |
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City arrived in 2009 as expansion content for Grand Theft Auto IV, packaging The Ballad of Gay Tony (TBoGT) and The Lost and Damned (TLoD) together. It is now folded into GTA IV: The Complete Edition on Steam. In TBoGT you play Luis Lopez, right-hand man to a nightclub owner, and the glitzy nightlife and outrageous set pieces stand in sharp contrast to the heavy drama of IV proper.
Its Accessibility score of 85 is among the highest in this entire ranking, thanks to mission design that moves at a brisker clip than IV’s. Storming a military base, parachute drops, club brawls — the cinematic beats come one after another, and there are plenty of moments where you think, “wait, GTA lets me do this?” It is short compared to the main game (hence the 62 in Replay Value), but the density is excellent.
- Accessibility of 85 — a breezier tone than IV and a sharp focus on action
- Bundled into IV: The Complete Edition, so it is cheap to get hold of
- Built on IV’s engine, so the visuals hold up to HD-era standards
- Replay Value of 62 — nowhere near the volume of a mainline entry
- It shares Liberty City and its world with Grand Theft Auto IV, so the context is hard to follow if you have not played IV
[No. 6] Grand Theft Auto III — Replay Value 88, the Turning Point That Gave Us the 3D Open World
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 73 | 42 | 80 | 88 | 283 |
Released for PS2 on October 22, 2001, Grand Theft Auto III carries a historic Metacritic score of 97 and lifetime sales of 14.5 million copies — a genuinely revolutionary game. It took a GTA series that had been a top-down 2D action game and flipped it into a 3D open world for the first time, and it’s no exaggeration to say that move established the existence of the open-world genre as we know it.
Protagonist Claude is a silent antihero — he never speaks a line — and he gets dragged into a mob war across Liberty City. The shock of seeing that much freedom running on a PS2 is still on the record more than 20 years later. The brutality score of 80 reflects the unforgiving difficulty of the PS2 era, and the sparse checkpointing may feel rough on modern players.
- A 97 on Metacritic and immense historical value as the origin point of the 3D open-world game
- Playable on current hardware via the GTA Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
- Replay Value 88 — a wealth of side missions that blew past the standards of its day
- Graphics 42 — those PS2-era polygons look seriously dated to modern eyes
- A silent protagonist makes it hard to get emotionally invested in the story
[No. 7] GTA: Vice City Stories — The Best GTA on PSP, and Essential Backstory for Vice City Fans
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 78 | 57 | 72 | 74 | 281 |
Launched for PSP in October 2006, GTA: Vice City Stories is a prequel set two years before Vice City. Seeing the Vice City of 1984 through the eyes of Vic Vance (Victor Vance) gives Vice City fans a satisfying piece of the puzzle. Plenty of outlets called it one of the best games on PSP, and the argument that it’s the peak of handheld GTA still has real staying power.
The controls are tuned for PSP and feel more refined than those in Liberty City Stories, and the big functional gap between the two is that this one lets you swim and pilot small aircraft. Throw in the business-empire building system and gang turf wars, and you get a density of content that has no business fitting on a handheld.
- Widely called the best game on PSP, and the finest handheld GTA in the series
- Swimming and small-aircraft piloting make it a big functional step up from Liberty City Stories
- As a Vice City prequel, it deepens your appreciation of the Vice City world
- PSP exclusive — your options for getting a copy today are limited to the used market
- No port to current hardware, so there’s no easy, convenient way to play it
[No. 8] GTA: Chinatown Wars — Accessibility 80, the Brilliant Top-Down Oddity on DS and PSP
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | 58 | 68 | 68 | 274 |
Released for Nintendo DS in March 2009, GTA: Chinatown Wars is the outlier of the family: it renders Liberty City from a top-down perspective for the first time since the original GTA. You play as Huang Lee, a young man from a Chinese crime family stepping into the drug trade, and an East Asian lead was a genuinely fresh choice for this series.
The DS version is packed with gimmicks no other GTA has, using the touchscreen for everything from defusing bombs to hot-wiring cars. The accessibility score of 80 reflects how easy it is to pick up on a handheld, and PSP plus iOS/Android versions followed later. On Metacritic it pulled scores in the 90s in the handheld category — elite company.
- Available on DS, PSP and iOS — a critically acclaimed oddball among handheld GTA games
- Touchscreen-driven gimmicks that squeeze real work out of the DS hardware
- The top-down view delivers a distinctive feel, close to the original GTA experience
- DS/PSP exclusive — today you’re stuck with used copies or an old smartphone
- Replay Value 68 — the amount of content is limited next to the mainline entries
[No. 9] GTA: Liberty City Stories — The First GTA on PSP, and the Thrill of Walking Liberty City Anywhere
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 73 | 50 | 70 | 72 | 265 |
Released for PSP in October 2005, GTA: Liberty City Stories was the groundbreaking title that first fit a GTA open world onto Sony’s handheld. You play as Toni Cipriani, throwing yourself into a mob war in the Liberty City of 1998. “You can do this much on a portable?” — that shock rattled every PSP owner at the time.
As a prequel set in the same Liberty City as GTA III, it’s studded with characters and locations from the main game. The control scheme, reworked for PSP, is rougher than the one in its successor Vice City Stories, but it deserves credit as a technical swing for the fences. The sticking point is that today a used PSP is the only way in.
- The first GTA open world on PSP — historically significant as a technical breakthrough
- A GTA III prequel that fills in the gaps of the GTA III world
- PSP exclusive — used copies are the only way to get it now
- A step behind Vice City Stories on features: no swimming, no flying planes
[No. 10] Grand Theft Auto 2 — The Final Form of Top-Down GTA, and the Last Great Game Before the 3D Era
| Accessibility | Graphics | Brutality | Replay Value | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 52 | 28 | 73 | 60 | 213 |
Grand Theft Auto 2, released in October 1999, is the last game before the top-down 2D action series pivoted to 3D. Set in the near-future Anywhere City, it has you playing all sides, picking up jobs while moving between multiple gangs. The wrinkle is that choosing whose work you take affects how each organization feels about you — an intricate system that’s clearly the seed of design ideas the later games would grow into.
A graphics score of 28 means there’s no arguing with how old it looks, but as a top-down GTA it’s the most complete game in that lineage. Rockstar Games gave it away for free on its official site for a stretch, too, which makes it a natural stop for hardcore fans who want to trace the series’ history end to end.
- The perfected version of top-down GTA and the historic bridge to the 3D series
- Managing your standing with multiple gangs is a complex system that points straight at the later games
- Graphics 28 — 1999 visuals are a very rough sell by modern standards
- Getting hold of a copy today is extremely difficult, which makes enjoying it purely as a game a tall order
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Final Thoughts — Pick the GTA That Fits How You Play
We’ve scored the top 10 GTA games on four axes: accessibility, graphics, brutality and replayability. Our No. 1 overall, Grand Theft Auto V (348 points), sits near the top of the series in accessibility, graphics and replayability alike, which makes it the no-hesitation recommendation for newcomers and returning players both. If you want the deepest story, Grand Theft Auto IV (333 points) is next in line; if you want sheer volume, that’s San Andreas (314 points).
Worth noting: the next entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto VI, is scheduled to launch in November 2026. Before you dive into VI cold, we’d strongly suggest getting a feel for the series with Grand Theft Auto V first. Once you’ve tasted the freedom of Los Santos, good luck getting out.
If you can’t decide where to start, start with Grand Theft Auto V. A 97 on Metacritic, the second-highest lifetime sales of any game on earth, and a $29 price on Steam — there’s nothing to complain about anywhere in that list. Finish V, and if you find yourself wanting a heavier human drama, move on to Grand Theft Auto IV; if you want to feel the freedom of the PS2 era, go to San Andreas. The GTA series is designed so that playing one game guarantees you’ll be curious about the next — and in that sense alone, clearing the whole catalog before Grand Theft Auto VI arrives is well worth your time.
Start playing the series now so you’re in peak shape when Grand Theft Auto VI lands.
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