Let me start by saying that even though I have played GTA since it was 2D isometric game series (though, I think I only played one game in the series at a friend's house back in primary school), GTA V was the only game in the series that I managed to complete. And I don't know why this was so: maybe I had some sort of ADHD as a child, and couldn't bother to stick with one game for long; maybe older games in the series were harder and not as user friendly; maybe this newest instalment was the most easiest and user friendly out-there. But I managed to complete it.
Now, it's not the first time since I played this game. I played it once when it came-out and for some reason dropped it. Afterwards, I have bought it on PS4 when I saw a significant Christmas discount and dropped it after the first plane mission, because I could not land the plane as hard as I tried. Looking back now, I chuckle, because flying and landing a plane in this game is the easiest part of aircraft controls. But, since, I did not have anything to play on my PC, I decided to give that Epic Games freebie a shot. And within a couple of weeks, managed to complete it.
I don't know whether I should write what is the story about in this game, because most possible many have already beaten it (more than once I might add), but the summary of it is that once upon a time a bank robbery got wrong, some people died, some people got a change at new life, and some people held grudges for years. And you are forced back in to the bank robbery business after doing a stupid thing against a very dangerous and influential persona. That's the gist of it.
In the game, you can control three characters; each having their own unique abilities (Franklin can stop time while driving making it easier for the player to make sharp turns or navigate through dense traffic; Michael can slow down-time while shooting, aka as bullet-time, which makes it easier to head-shot enemies; Trevor has the ability to not take damage while in rage mode) and missions unique to them. Though, after completing their own unique missions, the story-mission intertwines between the three main characters and more ore less you get to complete the mission by inter-changing between the three.
The story, while interesting at first, for me personally fell apart after going back to Los Santos as Trevor and meeting Michael. From there on out, you spend most of your time doing leg-work for criminal element without getting even a sniff of money your way, and the characters act like everything is cool and okey. I, for one, did not much appreciate this aspect. I though that I could get rich from organizing heists, but, huh, this sort of aspect was more or less reserved fro the online segment of the game, for which I have no interest in. There are in total four heists in the game and only three of them bring you rewards (while only one of them is the most lucrative). Story missions bring you little to no income, even contract assassination missions land you as little as ten grand, which is eye-brow raising to me. Sure, I guess Rockstar wanted the players to be able to gamble in stock-market (which is a thing in the game), especially during assassination missions, because the mission giver always tells you in what stocks to invest your money. But this is the thing that I did not like: in the first play-through, you are either forced to only get your one character rich by playing the stock market or you are forced to continuously force-save your game, find out in which stocks to invest, and then reload the last save so you can pop back in to your next to characters and invest their money in to the respective stocks before-hand.
Regardless, even if you do that, I came to a realization, after finishing the main storyline, that the money is practically worthless, at least for me; because, once you have finished the game, it is over, there's nothing to do. Sure, you can buy-up all of the properties for all of the characters, but why would you want to do that? The only lucrative properties are probably cinemas, golf-resort and weed joint (and, maybe, the guns smuggling operation via arirplane or buggy), but since there's nothing really interesting for me to do post-game (because you will only get fetch-quest missions from your properties), investing in stocks and getting more money, and buying-up properties for me bacame moot point. I don't think that the game has game+ mode where you can transfer all of your assets to a new game.
Also, one story-mission, canonically wise, did not make much sense to me either. You are approached by people from FIB (their version of FBI), who are crooked, and asked to acquire some vehicles, but they say that this is going to set you back financially - a couple of million to be exact. And the next heist begins (from which, the lion's share goes to the crooked FIB people; not to you). But this is the thing, canonically, one of the character has stolen one (or two) aircrafts (from the military no less, depending on what you choose to do). And I'm left thinking, why do they need the money to buy those vehicles, if they can simply steal them?
Outside story-missions, it was your typical modern-day GTA: free roaming with the ability to increase your stats through various activities (shooting, driving, swimming, flying etc.), however, most of them, if you are not interested in rewards (like having medals in triathlon or winning sports cars), you can safely skip. While at first driving was fun, but, because only towards the end of the game that I saw some sort of police presence, I could be driving over pedestrians and only very rarely did I receive wanted stars. I think this was some sort of bug, perhaps, but, really, up until maybe 65 percent of the game, outside story-missions, I never encountered a single cop.
Also, in regards to making money, while free-roaming as one of three characters, you might encounter pedestrians/hitch-hikers wanting a ride, and you can choose to give them a ride to their destination (this way, you may get some better members for your heist missions) or bring them to your acquaintances up in the mountains for some monetary rewards. Do that three times and you will get the chance at receiving, if my memory serves me correctly, one hundred grand (but you need to have many bullets; though, in this game, it's easy to come by).
There are side missions respective to each character, but more ore less they boil down to driving from point A to point B or doing sports (sometimes, killing people), though, you will very rarely get any money from it; and since money is harder to come by in this game, it is recommendable, if, for example, seeing a crime and stopping the perpetrator, to not return the money to the victim, but keep it.
Now, in regards to the biggest offender, that made me skip entire segments on purpose. Landing cargo by plane on narrow areas or moving vehicles. I admit, never bothered with flying-school missions, maybe, they have tips or exercises in regards to this, but, if I thought (until I got good) that landing planes was hard (well, planes are easy, helicopters were a pain in the ass), boy, was I for a rood awakening after encountering these missions. Not gonna lie, I actually tried landing the cargo or picking up the cargo up to twenty times (sometimes I even, miraculously, through sheer luck succeeded), but in most cases, I purposely landed or crashed my plane in order for the game to give me an option to skip those segments. They were satan incarnate and I hate them to my very core.
In general, it was an okey game that did what it did okey; nothing groundbreaking or very interesting.