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I want to preface this by saying: Bully is an absolutely PHENOMENAL game that I highly recommend anyone to play, especially if you're already a fan of open world GTA-style games. This review is not for the game Bully itself, but instead for specifically the PC port of the game that's available for purchase on Steam.

Visually and gameplay-wise, this is a pretty damn good port for an older title in my opinion. It definitely feels like the lighting and textures got a bit of an upgrade since the PS2 era, and there's little to no issues with glitches in the gameplay itself other than the camera getting stuck here and there. The main issue with this port, and the reason why I struggle to recommend it for purchase, is because this game is VERY unstable. The PC port of Bully is infamous in the community for almost being unplayable due to its instability, as the game WILL crash with little to no warning at any point while you're playing, and it will be FREQUENT. The game may crash while loading a new area, while you're loading into a mission, while you're finishing a mission, or even just when you're walking around in the overworld minding your own business trying to get from point A to point B. It's almost impossible to play this game for any amount of time over an hour, if you can even play for that long without it crashing, that's how unstable this build is.

A big part of why the game is unstable as hell is no doubt because it doesn't play with with Windows 10/11, but there's not much that can be done about that since Steam doesn't work on older OS's anymore. There's an avid community of people that have been tirelessly trying to figure out how to keep the game working for longer on a modern OS, which involves a LOT of modding, but even with all the bugfix community made patches and mods the game STILL won't run properly for longer than an hour at best. And, the worst part of all, because the game is so unstable if you attempt to run it in compatibility mode for an OS older than Windows Vista and/or run it in admin mode to assist its stability, the game will refuse to allow you to register any controllers plugged into the computer, which is far and away the optimal way to experience this game as the keyboard and mouse controls are absolutely ATROCIOUS, especially when you're using vehicles like the skateboard and bike.

TLDR: Bully is a GREAT game, with great gameplay, fun characters, a banger soundtrack, and a fantastic story. Unfortunately, the PC port (especially on newer machines) is absolutely awful. If you can find another way to play this game that doesn't involve playing it on steam, I recommend doing that instead, because this port simply does not work without it crashing every 15 minutes.