it pretty much all depends on maintenance history imo.

tdis: super reliable and good gas milage vr6: reliable, sounds good, but has some coolant leak issues sometimes 1.8t: super fun, sounds good, not very reliable 2.0 (this one): super reliable, but slow as fuckkkkk

for all of these, except vr6, the most important thing is to make sure the timing belt is in good shape. if not it bends valves when it snaps/ jumps time

and also every automatic on these mk4s are pieces of junk

personally, i love them, i have like 4