GTA San Andreas Review: The Most Ambitious PS2-Era Grand Theft Auto

More Game Than a Disc Had Any Right to Hold

🎮 This review is part of the The Grand Theft Auto Series – see every mainline GTA ranked and reviewed.

There is a moment, early in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, when you stop seeing the map’s edge and realise it just keeps going. You leave Los Santos, drive through scrubland and farms, hit a second city, then a third, then desert, mountains, a dam, an airfield. In 2004, on a single PlayStation 2 disc, that was genuinely difficult to believe.

San Andreas is the moment Rockstar stopped building a city and started building a state.

This is the fifth proper Grand Theft Auto, and it remains the most ambitious of the PS2 era by a wide margin. Where its predecessors gave you one playground, San Andreas gives you three cities, the countryside between them, and an RPG-style character who eats, trains, and changes shape based on how you live. It is enormous, generous, and frequently brilliant.

It is also rough around the edges, and we will get to that, because an honest review of San Andreas has to.

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CJ, Grove Street, and a Story About Family

The game opens with Carl “CJ” Johnson returning to Los Santos after years away, only to bury his mother and find his old gang, the Grove Street Families, in tatters. His brother Sweet is bitter, his old crew is scattered, and corrupt cops are pulling strings he can’t see yet.

What follows is, at its core, a story about family and betrayal.

CJ doesn’t want to be back. He gets dragged in anyway, rebuilding Grove Street block by block, fighting rival gangs, and slowly realising the war on the streets is being orchestrated from above. The narrative sprawls the way the map does, sometimes losing focus across its three-city journey, but the emotional spine holds: this is a man trying to put a broken family back together while everyone around him has an angle.

The voice cast sells it. The dialogue lands the early-90s West Coast setting with a confidence GTA hadn’t shown before. And the relationships, especially the fractured bond between CJ and Sweet, give the chaos a reason to matter.

It is not subtle. It is not RDR2-level character writing. But for 2004, San Andreas told a bigger, more human story than any GTA before it.

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An Entire State on One Disc

The scale is the headline, and it still impresses.

Los Santos is the gang-war city, all palm trees, low-riders, and turf battles. San Fierro brings hills, fog, and a more grown-up criminal scene. Las Venturas is the neon casino playground where the story’s ambitions get truly absurd. Between them lies countryside that no GTA had attempted before: farms, small towns, forests, desert, and a mountain you can actually climb.

Crucially, the world isn’t just big, it’s varied. The countryside has its own missions, its own vibe, and its own oddball characters. You go from drive-by shootings in the city to flying a crop-duster over fields within the same play session.

And then there’s the toy box. San Andreas didn’t just add cars. It added planes, helicopters, jetpacks, bicycles, motorbikes, boats, and even trains. Learning to fly a Hydra fighter jet over the entire state remains one of the great “I can’t believe this fits on a PS2” moments in gaming.

For sheer breadth of stuff to do, nothing else from its generation comes close.

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The RPG Systems: Bold, Clever, and a Bit Much

This is where San Andreas got genuinely experimental, and where opinions split.

CJ is not a fixed avatar. He’s a body you maintain. Eat too much fast food and he gets fat, which slows him down and hurts his stamina. Hit the gym and he builds muscle, which changes how NPCs react to him and how much damage he deals in fights. Skip meals entirely and he wastes away.

On top of that sit skill stats: driving, shooting, cycling, stamina, lung capacity, even gambling. Use a weapon enough and CJ gets steadier with it. Swim and run regularly and his stamina climbs. There’s a whole layer of light role-playing under the carjacking.

When it works, it’s wonderful. The idea that your daily choices shape your character was years ahead of where most action games were thinking.

When it doesn’t, it’s a chore. Keeping muscle from decaying, managing fat, grinding gym sessions, and babysitting stats can feel like maintenance work rather than play. It’s ambition that occasionally tips into busywork, and it’s a big reason this review isn’t handing out a 10.

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The Soundtrack and the Sense of Place

If you played San Andreas in 2004, you can probably still hum a radio station.

The soundtrack is one of the best Rockstar ever assembled, a sprawling time capsule of early-90s West Coast hip-hop, funk, rock, and country, threaded through radio stations you’ll leave on just to cruise. The DJs and ad parodies do as much world-building as any cutscene. Driving across the state at night with the right station on remains one of gaming’s purest comfort-food experiences.

The art direction nails its era too. The hazy Los Santos sun, the foggy San Fierro hills, the gaudy Las Venturas neon, each city has its own light and mood. For a PS2 game, the sense of place is remarkable, even when the textures themselves are mud by modern standards.

This is a game you feel as much as you play.

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Where the Ambition Shows Its Seams

Here’s the honest part, the reason San Andreas earns a confident 9 rather than a misty-eyed 10.

All that scope came at a cost. The game is janky. Driving physics are floaty, gunplay is loose and auto-aim leans heavily into “good enough,” and the camera can fight you in tight spaces. Some missions are infamous, the early flight-school sections and certain timed challenges have broken many a controller.

It’s also bloated. Not every system needed to exist. The dating mini-games, where you keep girlfriends happy with regular visits and gifts, are pure tedium dressed up as content. The stat upkeep, as covered, can nag. Territory wars overstay their welcome. There’s a sense that Rockstar threw in everything they could and trusted the sheer volume to carry it.

And it does carry it, mostly, because for every fiddly system there are five things that genuinely delight. But pretending San Andreas is a polished, tightly designed game would be dishonest. It’s a glorious, overstuffed, rough-edged beast. That’s part of its charm, and part of why it’s a 9 and not a 10.

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👨 The Dad Angle — Nostalgia, Time, and How to Revisit It

For a lot of dads in their late 30s and 40s, San Andreas is the GTA. It landed in our late teens or twenties, and revisiting CJ’s story now hits a specific nostalgic nerve. The question is whether to play it for the memories or introduce it fresh.

On how to revisit it: the Definitive Edition is the path of least resistance on a modern console, and despite a famously rough launch it has been patched into something genuinely playable, with sharper visuals and modern controls. Purists will tell you the original on PC with a few fixes is the truest version, and they’re not wrong, but for a tired Tuesday on the sofa, the remaster on a PS5 is the easy win.

On time: this is not a tight 12-hour campaign. The main story runs 30 to 40 hours and the open world can swallow far more. Treat it like a long, generous box of toys you dip into over weeks rather than a weekend blitz. There’s no shame in following the story missions and ignoring half the stat systems.

And the obvious one: this is firmly M for Mature. Violence, drugs, strong language, and sexual content all feature. It is a headphones-on, after-bedtime game, not a couch co-op session with the kids watching.

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FAQ

Is GTA San Andreas worth playing today?

Yes, especially if you appreciate ambition over polish. The scope, the radio stations, and CJ’s story still hold up, but be ready for dated controls and rough edges.

What is the best way to play San Andreas now?

On modern hardware, the Definitive Edition is the easiest route and has improved a lot since launch. The original version still plays well on PC with mods if you want authenticity.

Why is San Andreas rated a 9 and not a 10?

The sheer ambition means it is janky and bloated in places. Stat upkeep, the dating mini-games, and rigid mission design drag it down from a flawless score.

How long does GTA San Andreas take to finish?

The main story runs roughly 30 to 40 hours. With all the side content, collectibles and territory wars, completionists can sink well over 70 hours into the state.

Is GTA San Andreas suitable for kids?

No. It is rated M for Mature with violence, drugs, strong language and sexual content. This is a late-night game for after the kids are in bed.