Originally Posted by
Azar
San Andreas made some pretty big leaps over Vice City. The inclusion of far more real-to-life activities and minigames such as basketball, gambling, the ability to ride a bike (which I found surprisingly fun, really), not to mention a fairly deep skill system that rewarded you for honing your skills by increasing your strength, endurance, health, driving skill, weapon skill, etc. It also had a much better targeting system, the ability to climb fences/buildings--in general, much cleaner interactivity with the world.
And add on top of that the fact that Rockstar has some of the best movie-esque plotlines and top-notch acting in the industry. Even if San Andreas hadn't been as much of an improvement as it was, it still had a good plot and solid characters. Lots of people play JRPGs because they think the stories are cool and are willing to sit through lame random battles, and the GTA games are pretty much the epitome of good western storytelling in game form.