Honestly pretty weak. It’s hard carried by Joshua Graham, as none of the other characters are remotely interesting at all. Zion National Park is pretty and has some unique environments but everything kind of looks the same, and there isn’t really anything interesting to see other than the survivalist’s caves. Which do have good lore in them, but I think it’s all just a really annoying way to tell a guy’s story. Just look it all up online imo.

I do like the heavy tribal theme, and how Joshua and Daniel speak about the backgrounds of the tribes and how they formed to explain their languages or customs.

I also do have to genuinely question the endings, as you can choose to stay and fight or flee from Zion. I can’t think of a single reason why you would just leave, I’ve looked up the endings and everything and it’s all incredibly unsatisfying. Attacking the White Legs seems to be the best idea, it is also absolutely justified, so I gotta roll my eyes when Daniel’s ending slide genuinely tries to guilt trip you for killing a raiding group wearing tribal clothing. Did Obsidian genuinely think they deserve sympathy suddenly just because they have feathers and bones on their bodies? This moral dilemma doesn’t come up when you massacre the Vipers, Fiends, or Marked Men either.

I understand a lot of this is for Joshua’s character, he learns to show mercy to those that have wronged him, but I’m just saying if Salt Upon Wounds was in the main game you would gain karma for brutally murdering him. They should have made the White Legs an actual faction you could interact with and learn about over reskinned hostile bandits.

Uhh I like some of the weapons and armor added and Follows Chalk is pretty chill, the second Sorrows companion you get is absolutely worthless though I don’t even understand why they bothered coding her in and then locking Follows Chalk so you can’t have him as a follower anymore. Just awful.

Honest Hearts is a fetch quest loop with some cool voice acting in between. It’s perfectly serviceable I guess but doesn’t do much to really bring the FONV story up other than meeting Joshua.

This definitely is not the worst Grasshopper game I've played, I'll say that much.

This game like epitome of 2012 era culture where it was like nonstop pop culture references and random humor. Every joke that they try to land in this game is either not funny or just weird creepy and gross. Juliet I think as a character is really good and she's got some great moments but the game is just fucking weird about her all the time it just comes of as uncomfortable to me, the constant gooner jokes being made towards her when the game takes place the very day of her 18th birthday, so it's like "heh... dude she's just barely legal!" I'm not a fan personally I just think that's weird. Other than that though in the mindset of a 2012 landscape she is a pretty good and strong protagonist so there's that. But none of that really matters because this game kinda just isn't fun to play. Every zombie takes 3 business days to kill and you start off with no moves at all, so it's just a constant grind for money so you can actually do damage to them. Late game when you do get more moves it is a much more enjoyable time, but not by much, this game felt like a slog from start to finish to play. Doesn't help that every single bossfight sucks and isn't that interesting, aesthetics and music aside, which that part I think the game excels at.

From Grasshoppers 7th gen output I think this is easily the weakest, only reason people know of this game is because it's that "wacky japanese game where you play as a cheerleader killing zombies with a chainsaw." It's cool to look at from a pov of how Grasshopper did things back then, but even then I still can't wrap my head around the fact this game was made by some of the same core developers and writers as 25th Ward and Killer7, fuck even No More Heroes 1. This game baffles me honestly.

This game was genuinely great until Trevor gets introduced lol

I've replayed and beat this game three times (Xbox 360, Xbox One then PC) and I've had fun playing it but to be honest I didn't care much about the story and just played it to do crazy stuff.

After playing IV and paying more attention to stuff, I wanted to replay V to get a better perspective of how I'd view at as I'm older and I was genuinely having a lot of fun at first. I really like Michael and Franklin as characters, they're both funny but have some traits about them that make them feel like they could be real people. The missions in the game are also pretty varied and enjoyable and IMO, much better than IV's missions.

However, as soon as you finish the Jewelry Store heist, I feel like the game's story just completely declines and even the missions start to become much less fun.

I fucking hate Trevor, there's genuinely not a single thing I like about him as an adult. He's ugly, insanely try hard edgy with him being a cannibal and being into bestiality for some reason? He's dick to pretty much everyone unless its made for comedic value like how he falls in love for Martin's wife because she's a silly old lady (because its funny I guess). He just completely embodies the QUIRKY RANDOM🤪 era of the early 2010's when this game was made and Rockstar tries to glaze him as much as possible and make him seem so funny and badass when he's just an insane retard.

Trevor's missions fucking suck too and I hate all of Trevor's friends. All of his friend's barely exist after you leave for LS in the part of the game where you're FORCED to play as Trevor and they all just suck him off and praise him and have no other traits. Again, Rockstar tries SO HARD to make you like Trevor but I feel like it would be impossible for anyone over the age of 18 to do so.

If it was just Michael and Franklin it would be a cool dynamic between the rich class who's disillusioned with materialism and Franklin who's trying to grind to get to the top. Trevor is has like no thematic reasoning in the story besides just being apart of Michael's past, he's such a FORCE!

This game in general has a lot of places where it jumps the shark in terms of trying way too hard to be satire to the point where it isn't funny. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of funny things in the game but so many of the Weazel News ads on the radio made me roll my eyes and there's still plenty of characters outside of Trevor's story that are just obnoxious and way too cartoonishly annoying like all of Michael's family. GTA has always had pretty on the nose stuff in terms of humor but idk I feel like in V they try way too hard.

I do like some of the characters though. I really liked Lamar and Franklin's dynamic (It's too bad Franklin just doesn't exist in the story after Trevor is introduced 🙃) and there are plenty of things that are cool about the game. Los Santos is really cool, the radio is great, I love the amount of customization and money sinks with the cars, weapons, clothes, stocks, real estate, etc.

I just am really disappointed with how much worse this game gets after the Jewelry Heist because tbh if the game was just as consistently good beforehand, I may even say that this game is better than IV, even despite its detail and gameplay downgrades.

Regardless of all the things I bitch about, the game is still pretty enjoyable IMO, just very disappointing in a lot of ways.