Let's get this review straight, first; I loved GTA V. In my opinion, it had an amazing story, excellently written and voiced characters, a beautiful and expansive world, tons of quality content, and massive gameplay improvements. I probably would have given it a 9.5, the half point off due to some issues with pop-in, texture streaming, and frame rate, but overall it was an incredible game. I didn't write a review for it because I figured the game would speak for itself. GTA Online, however, is another matter.
I was very excited for it; it essentially seemed to be a pseudo-MMO, with a metric sh*t ton of missions available and seamless integration between different sessions and instances. Of course, this started off with server problems galore. The first 5 days of the game's release were plagued with major, major bugs and glitches, connection problems, server issues, and basically just made the game literally unplayable. Some of this even included losing entire campaign game saves as a result of corrupted files, meaning the problem extended beyond just the online component. In addition, "GTA$," GTA Online's name for in-game currency, is available through fairly expensive microtransactions. Some of my friends paid upwards of $30 on the virtual currency and lost all of it as their characters were corrupted and lost. While most of these issues had been fixed, there is no denying the buggy, glitchy mess that the launch was. Of course, Rockstar is releasing a $500,000 "stimulus package" for everyone who played during the first couple of October launch weeks, however this does not even come close to repaying the things many players lost, though I'm sure the people who haven't spent anything yet and are making the minuscule amounts of money in-game missions offer will be pretty happy they don't have to grind for an apartment anymore.
This brings me to my next point; mission payouts are absolutely tiny. Rockstar said in one article people would be making money "much faster in online" than the singleplayer, and that compels me to ask, where did they get that idea? I'm currently a Rank 32 within the game (a little over 20 hours invested in total), and the average mission I do takes about 25 minutes to complete and I'm lucky to get $10,000. To put this in comparison, the cheapest available property that you can buy is a shitty, 2-car garage that's $25,000. It'd take me an hour and a half almost of going through missions just to buy that, so you can imagine the $400,000 apartment is probably quite hard to purchase on your own. I get they need to push microtransactions, but seriously Rockstar? The only efficient way to make money, I've found, aside from exploits is to just spam survival missions over and over and over, and even then it becomes insanely boring. That is, if you don't die first or someone quits. You're probably saying, "but aren't the missions fun, and varied, and you wouldn't mind spamming them?" Which again, brings me to my next couple points.
Mission design and game modes in general are just a drag, except for the rare exception. Let's take the most prominent example, deathmatch or team deathmatch. Every single one of the maps I have played on for these game modes so far have been god-awful. I'm not exaggerating either; maybe there's a really good map I'm missing, but for the most part everything is just set up for campers. Spawns are awful, especially in Free-For Alls, as you will literally spawn in right in front of people with no regulation. Also, balance is non-existent. For some incredibly stupid reason, the game "balances" people by putting all of the skilled, experienced players on one team and putting the unskilled, crappily armed players on the other. Does that make any sense? And this is coming from a guy who's usually on the "experienced" team. "Hey, guys, let's make it so all the Rank 5 guys with shitty gun skills and hardly more than a starter pistol go to one team, whilst the most experienced and heavily armed guys go to the other!" It is just nonsensical.
I've also just realized I've skipped over a big part of the game; character creation. Holy sh*t. I hate to sound melodramatic, but this is probably some of the worst character creation I've ever seen in a game since the 90s. Aside from your hair, you cannot edit your character's looks directly, instead you have to choose who your parents and grandparents are! Let's not forget to make all of the grandmother's and moms look like ugly crack whores who you'd likely find on the side of the street! In addition, the character's themselves are just ugly graphics wise. Their faces have very low polys and are pretty muddy on the texture side. Choosing starter skills for yourself is useless and serves no purpose; you'll just spend 30 minutes deciding on what the best combination of sliders are, as there is no point otherwise. While in-game character customization is decent clothing, tattoo, and hair wise, about 90% of the stuff is locked for you to rank up. I don't really take issue with this as I'm not to into making my guy have the perfect clothing or whatever, and I also understand the purpose of requiring progression in order to keep people interested, but your options will be very limited otherwise.
Moving on, let's jump to the story. Or what little of it exists. See, when I heard over 700 "missions" I wasn't expecting each one of them to be superbly written and involved, but I at least expected a little structure to them and to have some kind of story indicating your rise to fame in the criminal underworld of San Andreas. But in reality they are mostly just different maps and game modes strewn together, with a couple sentences written in to provide a weak backstory. Some missions do have cutscenes with some characters from the main game, where dialogue is actually spoken, but this is rare and for the most part you'll just be playing different game types.
So it seems like I've been pretty hard on the game, almost bashing it. Maybe it was a bit of disappointment due to a little hype for the game, but at the same time, there is no ignoring the overwhelming number of negative things that are there. Of course, there are some positive things. For one, it doesn't really cost you anything and if you just get GTA V for the campaign then you'll have more than your money's worth back without touching the online, so you might as well try it. Secondly, screwing about in the gorgeous city of Los Santos with your friends will always be good fun, so I have to admit while much of the game was a grind I did have a lot of funny and cool moments. Still, GTA Online isn't all that incredible, especially as a single player experience; if you have friends with you you don't really have anything to lose, just don't expect to be amazed.