Every GTA Game Ranked, Worst to Best

The desk's opinion ranking of 14 GTA games, episodes and handheld entries, from GTA Advance to San Andreas, argued from scores, sales and design firsts.

Opinion: this is the desk's ranking, argued from the record. Tell us yours on the forum.

Every Grand Theft Auto fan has a list, and most of those lists are built on nostalgia alone. Ours is built on nostalgia too, we admit it, but every claim under each pick is checked against the archive: Metascores from our review scores page, units from Take-Two's filings on our sales history page, and dates from our release dates page.

How we ranked

This is opinion, weighted on four things: the story, the world, the game's influence on the series, and how it plays today. Critics' scores inform the order but do not set it, which is why a 98 is not at the top. We ranked 14 releases: the main games, the two GTA IV episodes, the handheld entries and GTA Online, which Metacritic scores as its own game. We left out the London mission packs (no critic reviews on Metacritic) and the 2021 Definitive Edition, a remaster of three games already on the list. GTA VI is due Nov 19 2026 and is not ranked until we play it.

The ranking, from 14 to 1

14. Grand Theft Auto Advance (2004)

A top-down GTA III prequel on Game Boy Advance, made by an outside studio, Digital Eclipse, and, per its developers, held back about a year so it could launch alongside San Andreas. That decision buried it. Its Metascore of 68 from 33 critics is the lowest of any original GTA release. It is a curiosity with a real place in GTA III's story, but there is no reason to pick it over anything below. More at GTA Advance.

13. Grand Theft Auto (1997)

The original deserves respect and very little playtime. You could not save partway through a level, and the points targets could take hours. But it invented the furniture: pay-phone jobs, a wanted level, and a radio station tied to each car. It also sold, with Take-Two reporting more than 1 million PC and PlayStation copies shipped by November 1998. It has no Metascore (0 critic reviews on Metacritic). See GTA 1997.

12. Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)

GTA 2 edges out the original because of one idea that still matters: gangs that remember you. GameSpot's review described three gangs per level with a respect meter, so every job for one crew made its rival angrier. That is the seed of every turf war since. Critics were not moved, and its PlayStation Metascore is 70. It was also the last top-down main entry. See GTA 2.

11. Vice City Stories (2006)

Vic Vance's prequel is the better-looking of the two PSP games and the weaker story, and critics agreed it was a small step down: 86 on PSP against Liberty City Stories' 88. Its empire-building is more interesting on paper than in play. What it has is staying power. A 2026 Take-Two filing, reported by Game File, put it at over seven million copies. See Vice City Stories.

10. GTA Online (2013)

Its launch was rough enough that Destructoid scored it 70 in October 2013, and its Metascore is 83 on PS3 from only four reviews. Ranking it this low will annoy some readers. But we rank stories and worlds, and Online borrows its world from GTA V. Its case is endurance: The Cayo Perico Heist let players run a whole heist solo for the first time (Take-Two, Feb 2021), and the Kortz Center Heist landed Jul 14 2026. See GTA Online.

9. Liberty City Stories (2005)

Toni Cipriani's return to GTA III's city was a technical stunt: a full 3D GTA running on a handheld, with seven local multiplayer modes on PSP. Critics gave it 88 on PSP and said it did not push the formula. Players did not care. Guinness lists it as the best-selling PSP game, at 7,502,469 units as of Jul 2013. See Liberty City Stories.

8. The Lost and Damned (2009)

The grimmest GTA, and proof that a story expansion could stand as a game. Johnny Klebitz's biker war runs through scenes from Niko's story, seen from the other side of the gun. It scores 90 on Xbox 360. It cost $19.99 at launch and stayed on Xbox 360 alone for 420 days in North America, until the Apr 13 2010 PS3 and PC release. See The Lost and Damned.

7. Chinatown Wars (2009)

The best handheld GTA, and it is not close. A cel-shaded overhead Liberty City, touch-screen tasks and a sharp police system earned a DS Metascore of 93, 5 points above Liberty City Stories. Then it flopped at the till: NPD counted 89,000 US units in March 2009, against a 450,000 forecast from Wedbush Morgan's analyst. A great game that too few people played. See Chinatown Wars.

6. The Ballad of Gay Tony (2009)

Its 89 sits a point under The Lost and Damned's 90, and we rank it higher anyway. Luis Lopez's story brought the color back to Liberty City: parachutes, nightclubs and an armored APC. It also scored missions against set objectives and let you replay them, a design idea that pointed straight at GTA V. It closed the GTA IV trilogy on a high. See The Ballad of Gay Tony.

5. Grand Theft Auto III (2001)

Rockstar called it "the first three-dimensional, open-world Grand Theft Auto title," and every game above it owes it everything. Its 97 on PS2 still holds up. In Take-Two's books, the PS2 version alone was 29.8% of the company's fiscal 2002 net sales. It ranks fifth only because the three-year run that followed improved on it in every way, starting with giving the hero a voice. See GTA III and Claude.

4. Vice City (2002)

It arrived 372 days after GTA III, on the same console, and it was better: Ray Liotta's voice, motorcycles, interiors, and a 1980s soundtrack. It scores 95 on PS2. Its PS2 version was 33.6% of Take-Two's fiscal 2003 net sales, the highest single-title share in the company's 2001 to 2005 filings. It is also the city GTA VI goes back to, inside the state of Leonida. See Vice City.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)

The highest-scored GTA, at 98 on both PS3 and Xbox 360, and the most serious one. Niko Bellic's Liberty City is dense, gray and full of consequence. It sold about 6 million units in its first week, per Take-Two. Its driving and combat divide players, and its PC port scored 90, 8 points under the consoles. Its structure, one city holding three stories, is its legacy. See GTA IV.

2. Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

Three playable leads, heists, and a record-setting launch. Guinness counted 11.21 million units and $815.7 million in its first 24 hours. Take-Two's Aug 7 2026 10-Q puts it at over 230 million units sold in, about 48.9% of the whole series' over 470 million. It scores 97 on four consoles. It has carried the series for thirteen years, and it plays better today than anything on this list. See GTA V.

1. San Andreas (2004)

The best GTA is the one that tried to do everything. One state, three cities, and a map IGN called "almost six times the size of Vice City." CJ eats, trains, swims and learns to fly, and the player shapes how he looks and fights. Its Metascore is 95 on PS2 from 80 reviews, and it sold more than 12 million units by Jan 31 2005, about three months after launch, per Take-Two. Some missions have aged badly. The story, the scope and the sheer generosity have not. See San Andreas and Carl Johnson.

The summary table

Metascore is the lead platform's score on Metacritic, as of Oct 11 2026. Year is the first release.

Rank	Game	Year	Metascore	One-line verdict
1	San Andreas	2004	95 (PS2)	The series at its most generous
2	GTA V	2013	97 (PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One)	The game that carried a decade
3	GTA IV	2008	98 (PS3, Xbox 360)	The best-reviewed and most serious
4	Vice City	2002	95 (PS2)	Proof the formula was not a fluke
5	GTA III	2001	97 (PS2)	The big bang
6	The Ballad of Gay Tony	2009	89 (Xbox 360)	Liberty City with the lights back on
7	Chinatown Wars	2009	93 (DS)	The handheld peak few people played
8	The Lost and Damned	2009	90 (Xbox 360)	DLC that plays like a full game
9	Liberty City Stories	2005	88 (PSP)	A technical stunt that sold
10	GTA Online	2013	83 (PS3)	A service, not a story
11	Vice City Stories	2006	86 (PSP)	Slower story, long tail
12	GTA 2	1999	70 (PlayStation)	Respect, invented
13	Grand Theft Auto	1997	none (0 reviews)	The blueprint
14	GTA Advance	2004	68 (GBA)	Buried by its own release date
-	GTA VI	due Nov 19 2026	none yet	Not ranked until we play it

What the table shows

Read the Metascore column against the rank and the gaps are the argument. GTA IV's 98 is the top score and sits third, because we weight how a game plays today. The Ballad of Gay Tony's 89 sits above two higher-scored entries, Chinatown Wars (93) and The Lost and Damned (90), because of what it pointed to next. And three of the bottom four are the top-down games, which shows how much the move to 3D in 2001 changed what a GTA is.

The other lesson is that the top five are all main games. No episode or handheld game cracks them, even the excellent ones. The open city, built at full size, is what GTA is.

Your turn

We expect the San Andreas pick to start arguments, and GTA Online at 10 to start more. Bring your list to the forum.

OPINIONEvery GTA Game Ranked, Worst to Best