Every Grand Theft Auto Game Ranked By Difficulty

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has always been focused primarily on storytelling. Creating slick characters, beautiful open worlds to explore, and a tongue-in-cheek style that lets players have a hugely fun gaming experience without requiring any crazy level of challenge in Grand Theft Auto.

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For this reason, it is easy to assume that none of the Grand Theft Auto games are particularly difficult. This isn’t actually the case. Even though the most recent games have had a focus on accessibility, meaning they are easier than some other video games, some of the Grand Theft Auto franchise entries have missions that are actually much more difficult than they are given credit for.

Updated on January 10, 2024, by Chris Harkin: With the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer being released, now is a better time than ever to review the franchise thus far. Of the many games that have been released since the Grand Theft Auto franchise began, many of them have never been played by a majority of fans of the most recent games. It might surprise players to learn how the difficulty level of the games has varied over the years, and with the franchise not slowing down, it will be interesting to continue watching how this varies with the release of the next major entry.

11 Grand Theft Auto 5

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 2.79/5

The most recent entry in the franchise, despite being over a decade old, is still Grand Theft Auto 5. Focusing on three different characters that work together on a series of jobs in Los Santos, this entry had an expansive scope and brought a lot of new and updated features to the series, making a lot of driving and shooting controls which the series has struggled with a huge amount less challenging.

Between the scale of Grand Theft Auto 5 and the popularity of the online mode, giving fans the chance to enter roleplaying servers and join their friends in the world of Los Santos, the popularity of this game still hasn't waned. But the difficulty has never been considered high by players. Compared to the entries that preceded it, GTA 5 is a generally easy game that doesn't punish mistakes nearly as much as older titles.

10 Grand Theft Auto 4

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 2.98/5

The interesting thing about the difficulty in Grand Theft Auto 4 is that, unlike earlier entries when some of the difficulties throughout the games may have been unintentional, it seemed very much on-purpose and incorporated into the game in Grand Theft Auto 4. The biggest complaint that gamers have about this entry is driving, which was set up with much more realistic controls and takes up large sections of the game, but is very difficult to do well.

Grand Theft Auto hasn’t been primarily about driving since the early days of the franchise from before Grand Theft Auto 3, but this entry made a big deal out of it and left players feeling irritated about it quite a lot. This made car chases intriguing, while a lot of the combat difficulty from earlier entries also remained the same, making for a fascinating combination of challenges that players were forced to handle the whole way through their time in Liberty City, particularly facing off with some incredibly dumb AI characters.

9 Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.02/5

One of the handheld entries in the GTA series, Chinatown Wars shares some similarities with the style of the earliest Grand Theft Auto games, including the top-down perspective. This, for many players, added a learning curve, making it a challenge to get the hang of the camera angle they were unused to, as well as dealing with the challenging missions.

The police AI isn't as challenging as it is in some other GTA games. Chinatown Wars generally is pretty strong on driving aspects, but as with other early GTA games, the shooting isn't great and the auto-aim can make it especially challenging for players at times.

8 Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.1/5

Liberty City Stories was the first Grand Theft Auto game developed for handheld consoles, getting a primary release on the PSP before being ported to the PS2. This meant that some of the difficulty in the game again came from clunky controls that players had difficulties mastering, but some of the different features added for this one were also problems.

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These included auto aim, which left players wanting to tear their hair out because they would often decide to go after a different enemy than the one the players wanted. Also, the RC races provided an unheard-of level of difficulty for the franchise up to that point, and many timed missions were made massively difficult because of police and enemies all chasing the player at once in some of the scariest moments in the franchise. The equipment also just seemed quite underpowered throughout Liberty City Stories, adding even further challenge for players.

7 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.1/5

Vice City is an oft-overlooked Grand Theft Auto game that deserves more recognition than it gets for having some of the best narrative moments in any GTA game, and one of the best open-worlds of its time. However, this was another game that came in the days of the franchise when Rockstar was still trying to perfect the art of the 3D open world, and as such, there were a few interesting difficulty problems.

While the auto-aim was a problem in some GTA games, Vice City wouldn’t let players use the feature in certain missions where there was a lot of combat, and the difficulties in aiming for themselves left many players feeling particularly frustrated with combat in the game. It was also difficult to find and stay in good cover while getting into shoot-outs, further adding to the hardship that players faced in combat all the way through the game. While Vice City is a great entry that deserves to be remembered narratively, there are a few things about it that continue irritating players to this day when they revisit the entry.

6 Grand Theft Auto Online

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.11/5

The idea and release that has kept Grand Theft Auto so relevant as a series over the past ten years, GTA Online has allowed players the freedom to join their friends in heists and missions, and as a multiplayer addition to the series, the difficulty was increased quite a bit, making sure players were more likely to need friends to complete many of the missions.

Between other, more experienced players being easily able to pick on the weak and new players struggling to get together a crew in order to complete missions, GTA Online has a lot of challenges for anyone starting out. It gets easier as time goes on, but like many online games that feature PvP, there is a huge learning curve.

5 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.15/5

Another of the games that continued following up on the success of the quickfire main entries released for the PlayStation 2. Players have had a lot of struggles with Vice City Stories over the years, partially due to the controls not being great, making driving, especially with the hovercraft missions, extremely challenging.

Besides that, the difficulty spikes seem fairly random for some missions which occur pretty early in the game, and both the number of enemies and tight time limits in certain missions have left players scratching their heads as they wonder how they were supposed to pick up the victory. Missions like Jive Drive and Unfriendly Competition help showcase some of the most brutally difficult moments of the game.

4 Grand Theft Auto 3

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.19/5

Grand Theft Auto 3 was the very first game in the franchise to feature a 3D open-world style, making it the first game in the franchise that fans remember well and consider to be legendary, and one of the most experimental Rockstar titles ever. It won many Game of the Year awards and is considered by many to be one of the best games of all time. However, Rockstar made many changes to this entry and as such, there was a surprising level of difficulty to Grand Theft Auto 3.

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Controls were somewhat less smooth than they would be in later entries, and players had a hard time as a result. There were also just a lot of random enemy spawns, and the AI was generally a little better at taking players out if challenged than they would be in later games in the series. While GTA 3 remains a beautifully fun, legendary game that always deserves a replay, there are some problems with the difficulty that still irritate some gamers to this day.

3 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.19/5

San Andreas, despite being one of the most beloved video games in history, is the hardest of the lot when it comes to the GTA franchise. The controls hadn’t entirely been fixed from previous entries but much of the general frustration that players had over the lack of swimming mechanics and other challenges that led to silly deaths had been fixed, improving the game and making the difficulty much more on-purpose.

Instead, San Andreas simply created some of the most difficult missions in the history of the franchise. From the "Wrong Side of the Tracks" mission onwards, players begin to see how ridiculously hard it can be to complete some of the missions in San Andreas. However, with changes to the controls in the Remastered Trilogy that was recently released, some of the difficulty in older entries has been neutralized and made a lot more accessible for gamers who want to experience the more fun aspects of these games without all the original challenges, including one of the most brutal final missions in the franchise.

2 Grand Theft Auto 2

Game FAQ Difficulty Score: 3.35/5

The earliest Grand Theft Auto games, the first two entries before the franchise received a major facelift, were some of the most difficult games released at the time. The sequel somehow managed to bring down the difficulty from the very first game without becoming anywhere near easy.

With police that were able to kill the player almost instantly, there being costs to saving the game and a limited number of lives, Grand Theft Auto 2 is one of the most challenging games ever released for the PlayStation 1. Players today don't remember this entry well, mostly because of the huge difference between the earliest entries and the more modern ones, but the difficulty spike is also a big reason this isn't often revisited.