High school boiled down
It's rare that a developer goes from make a adult game about crime with very adult themes. To making a game about a high school kid who moves to a school for child delinquents and socially challenged kids, but in a lot of ways Bully is like a GTA. For example Bully is a giant open world with stuff to collect, bike races to do, arcade games to play, and much more to just kind of find.The mission structure is very similar to GTA, you do a bunch of work for one of the factions;like the jocks or the nerds, and the more the more you do work for one faction it can effect your standing with others. Which in turn can effect the way some of the people treat you at school. The combat is very similar but instead of machine guns and rocket launches. Your playing with slingshots and stink bombs.
There are also a lot of things that are different about Bully that really makes it feel like your in high school it feel very structured, but that's not a bad thing at all. Like you have classes two times a day everyday until you pass the highest level of that class, and of you don't go the prefects or any adult of authority. All the classes have there own perks like one of the classes shows you where all the collectibles, and unlike the protagonists in GTA jimmy is 15 and needs his sleep so if your out past 2 you just pass out on the spot which can make some night missions feel a little too time restrictive.
The story starts you out in a car ride with you and your mom and what seems to be your new stepdad. They then drop you off in the front of Bullyworth academy where you meet the principle and some of the teacher, but the fun starts to come in when you go to your dorm room and meet your new friend Gary, who is a sociopath, i don't know how else to put it.You soon start to become manipulated by him, and you two soon go your separate ways and you start to see less and less of him. You then start to do work for the other factions of the school. Playing Bully it kind of puts you back and makes you think about your time in high school, I know the archetypes aren't as plain and simple as they are in Bully but it does a great job of boiling a lot of the high school experience down to a 20 hour game.
Then there are a few technical issues with bully I didn't really have too many other then the game crash on me a couple of times, and that just sucks after that happened for the first time a started saving much more frequently. I can't really say definitely how the game will turn out for you, but it didn't seem to bad. From my experience with it. Over all the game is well made but parts of it just seem kind of repetitive and broken;overall though I think it's a great game.