Niko Bellic's grounded, weighty Liberty City — the franchise's most grown-up entry.
GTA IV is the franchise's most-grown-up entry — a 78-mission slow-burn crime drama anchored by Niko Bellic, the most-quotable Eastern European immigrant in Liberty City. These are the ten missions that define the experience: the bank heist that put Rockstar's physics engine on the map, the betrayals that pay off Niko's revenge subplot, and the choices that branch the final act. Ranked by design ambition, narrative weight, and how often each shows up in 'best missions in any GTA' lists.
The bank heist mission. Niko, Packie, Derrick and Michael McReary rob the Bank of Liberty in Algonquin, then fight a running gunbattle with the LCPD through Chinatown. The on-foot escape through subway tunnels and rooftops remains the most-emulated bank-heist set-piece in gaming, with countless action films borrowing the structure outright.
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Niko storms the Mafia's Northwood drug front to recover Phil Bell's heroin. The mission's third-act pursuit through abandoned hospital corridors with limited ammo is one of the franchise's tensest gunfights, and the radio chatter from Phil during the extraction is the game's tightest two-character mission writing.
The diamond exchange in the Libertonian. Niko meets the Jewish mob and the Ancelotti Family to broker a deal that goes immediately sideways, leading to a three-way shootout in a museum lobby. The aftermath sets up the diamond MacGuffin that drives the entire second-half plotline.
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Luis Lopez (TBoGT) hijacks a diamond exchange and triggers the events that pull Niko, Johnny, and Luis into one converging story across all three GTA IV titles. The motorcycle-chase escape is one of TBoGT's signature set-pieces and the connective tissue between the trilogy.
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Niko rams a construction crane through the Ancelotti mob's penthouse to recover a Pegorino payment. The crane-as-wrecking-ball mission design has never been topped in the franchise, and the slow vertical ascent to the top of the building gives Liberty City its most cinematic camera angle.
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The dockside ambush at the East Hook ferry terminal. Niko fights through a Mafia hit squad to extract one of Packie's wounded brothers, with the harbor cranes and stacked container fields providing the franchise's first vertical urban-combat playground.
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Brucie's amateur-hour heist mission. Niko and Brucie steal a shipment of pharmaceuticals from a delivery van, then sell it back to the same pharmacy. The mission is short but the Brucie-and-Niko comic pairing during the drive is the game's funniest non-Roman dialogue scene.
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Niko tracks down Florian Cravic (now Bernie Crane), one of the surviving members of his old Bosnian army unit. The mission has no combat — just a long conversation that re-frames the war-flashback subplot that runs through the campaign. The franchise's quietest, most-thoughtful mission.
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The penultimate revenge mission against Darko Brevic — the man who betrayed Niko's army unit. The choice between killing Darko or letting him live is one of the franchise's most-discussed branching decisions, and the way the mission strips away every action-movie flourish to leave just Niko and his ghost is one of GTA IV's most adult moments.
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Deal-ending route's final mission. Niko hunts Dimitri Rascalov down a series of Liberty City landmarks before the closing rooftop confrontation. The Statue of Happiness as a backdrop, the rain-soaked rooftop shootout, and Roman's funeral coda make this Rockstar's most-emotionally-weighted finale across the entire HD era.
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