Look, we deserve better from our modern AAA releases. I did not suffer from any technical issues but its clear to see this game could of used a lot more time in the oven. But all that being said, I'm not gonna lie. I had a pretty fun time playing through this.

As someone who does not really like open worlds or deserts, I thought the setting for this was pretty good. Sure graphically the game isnt great and the world itself does feel pretty lifeless but as a location/vibe I enjoyed it well. I see a lot of people talking about how cringe all the characters and dialogue are but I didnt really feel like they were? Maybe (considering what the internet thinks about some of my favorite series) i just have a really high tolerance but I don't recall any moments that really bothered me and I thought the main cast was all pretty likeable. Although at least half of the reason for that is Greg Chun being such a lovely VA. For my "Boss" the voice I chose was Erica Lindbeck's who I also adore. It was always really funny to hear her swear with a similar voice to one of her other characters. The story mode was a bit shorter than expected but for the most part I had fun with it. None of the missions really stand out and the few setpiece ones definitely lack the oomph they really needed. The story itself is very silly and definitely suffers a bit from its lack of length but idk, it's another thing that i thought was pretty enjoyable and I was satisfied with the ending.

The gameplay is kinda oof. The driving controls for normal vehicles is pretty goddamn awful but you unlock stuff like a hoverbike or tank pretty easily and those were a lot more fun to use. The shooting is fine but quite stiff. I found that most of the guns kinda sucked but the fully upgraded magnum was pretty busted and fun to use. You also get a finisher that replenishes where you can insta kill weaker/weakened enemies and those are pretty silly (in the fun way). Another big mechanic of the game is pretty standard open world stuff. There is an emphasis on expanding businesses and doing a bunch of side missions to upgrade them. These are as repetitive as they sound but they do have their own personality and flair to them. I'm on a bit of a crunch to beat stuff before the year ends so I didnt play much but from what I did they were enjoyable enough. The last thing I wanna touch on is the customization. I always love when games have this and Saints Row's system is pretty good. Especially because this game lets you be (half) naked. Running around and gunning people down with my tits out like god intended is lovely. Unfortunately you can only be topless OR bottomless which is clearly sexist anti-lesbian agenda. Just another thing about the game that's half assed....

I feel like a lot of my review is saying something about the game that isn't really good and then me saying I like it anyways. It's not that I am just coping and trying to justify to myself why I bought it. I love trying new games so thats never really a factor for me. I see all the problems this game has and I can definitely understand why there isnt really anyone who loves this. It's mid by modern standards for sure but the hate does feel a bit overblown. It's still constantly brought up as the worst game of the year and I legit unsubscribed from a youtuber I used to watch because he fuckin talked about it so goddamn much. Im still not really sure why i like this game either but the more I think about it the more I wonder if I really need a reason. In the end I just do, and its a fun game to sit back with while you have youtube on.

In the end i feel incredibly conflicted about Saints Row 2022. The only thing I can say definitively is that the main theme is pretty bopping and its been stuck in my head all day.

Thanks for reading this "review" <3
Next up is whatever game comes next, but a Balan Wonderworld one is in the works :p

Nancymeter - 65/100
Time Played - 17 hours 52 minutes
Game Completion #145 of 2022
Game Completion #11 of November

I wouldn’t exactly call the new Saints Row a major disappointment or a certified franchise-killer if it didn’t become obvious before that this wouldn’t really work. Saints Row has been in arrested development since the beginning in trying to cope with its own identity and every subsequent entry, at least from 2 onwards, has hit this problem harder than this could’ve in one sweeping stroke. Nothing Volition could accomplish here could honestly tarnish the integrity of the brand even more than some of their previous attempts did. But what it could’ve accomplished is the opportunity for Volition to salvage the Saints Row name, learn from what went right to what went wrong, and prove themselves as developers still worth keeping an eye on.

On paper, starting all over from scratch to distance themselves from the mess of the previous games while supposedly trying to harken back to earlier roots of the series seemed like a smart direction to both course correct and draw in a potential new audience of fans. Saints Row 2 especially seemed like the perfect type of game to retrace from nowadays while Rockstar is starving the GTA audience because online microtransactions are the plague. Not to mention that video games have improved a lot in recent years which Volition could benefit from by working on a big project like this. The moment the trailers started popping up everywhere and the game came out finally, the first sight of high-tech military dudes with laser guns and anti-capitalist gangsters wearing neon cat helmets destroyed any hopes I had of a throwback to early Saints Row (2). Instead, it felt like more of the same of what we got with Saints Row ¾ but with a new sheen of modern paint. This sentiment isn’t entirely true, to be fair, but it’s not exactly off base with everything I didn’t like from SR3/4 which the reboot shared too much with while presenting newer problems that those games didn’t even have. The Saints Row Reboot isn’t a game of interesting quality worth calling this franchise sinking disaster. I understand where this comes from though because while it doesn’t damage Saints Row in any new way it sure as hell doesn’t redeem it either. At its uppermost best, parts of it are just okay, if not very safe and unwilling to test the waters, while the overwhelming rest of it is just painfully boring and mediocre. This still sticks by the Saints Row formula you’d be familiar with but it resembles it in the most artificial sense possible.

The player customization, which is the one thing Saints Row nailed well in 2, is surprisingly shoddy here. Calling it a step up from SR3/4’s customization is like saying getting shot in the leg isn’t as bad as having your leg just hacked off and eaten. I guess you can say that and I wouldn’t disagree but there’s not enough done with it to elevate it higher than what you’d usually see in similar games offering similar experiences. The options, sliders, and presets offered when creating your character’s physical appearance are limited or confusing to work and build off from. I have no idea what the hell Volition were thinking with some of the presets and what the hell each of them even meant to players going into this the first time. You can still theoretically create whatever wholly unique specific character you’d want, but I found it an uneasy challenge given what the game provides you with which pales compared to how simple and tight SR2’s character creator was. They fixed clothing by having a healthy variety of just “normal” clothes that feel worth customizing and wearing, so I’ll give props for that. The only two big improvements this brought to the table was being able to save your characters’ appearances to switch between easily and weapon customization which is the most flexible by far. Besides that, there’s not much here that I can say is a general improvement upon how Saints Row approached customization before. It feels like an awkward half-step forward than anything.

Santo Ileso is a thoroughly unimpressive open-world. The biggest compliment that I can give it is just that it’s not Steelport based on trying to have a vaguely better defined aesthetic. Which as far as Southwestern settings have gone (and I’ve seen through quite a bit of Southwestern backdrops strangely enough) it’s some of the most inauthentic and dead. I guess setting it around a desert, making everything look brown or yellow, and having some really basic Mexican iconography littered around created some illusion that it's actually an interesting setting worth exploring. But as I said earlier, trying to say “X” is better than SR3/4 is neither the flex or high praise for this franchise at all. And even then the open-world still has lots of the same kinds of problems that Steelport had back in SR3/4; the map doesn’t feature any memorably designed districts or landmarks, the confusing lack of gang presence through territories SR2-style to make it feel more reactive, and side content which feels like the absolute worst this series ever offered. The challenges suck and aren’t worth it. The criminal ventures are badly designed especially when the game forces you to do it in order to progress certain missions. The activities didn’t even feel worth it anymore because all the fun was just sucked out. It actually felt like the developer who handled this part of the game got fucking lazy and instead created an AI that got fed with big budgeted AAA games released in the past decade to their job for them. The core gameplay suffers from this too. The shooting feels generic, the weapons don’t have any kickback to them, and includes bullet-sponge enemies with MMO styled health bars, damage protection, and a bunch of pop up notifications on screen whenever you do anything in combat. The driving is the worst in the series too. Many of the vehicles you can get your hands-on feel incredibly stiff to steer and actually driving them is just as miserable as it felt in Cyberpunk 2077.

There’s factions, but like Saints Row 3, there’s no work to be done with them to feel like satisfying threats needed to overcome. They’re even more pointless to include than they were in SR3 because besides being annoying cannon fodder to shoot down during missions they do nothing. You never get scenes like you did in Saints Row 2 where the respective gangs and their bosses felt like well-defined characters with motivations and agency beyond the player. It made the gang warfare aspect of Saints Row feel truly full of character and having the right sense of edge when the real shit just happens. It reinforced these conflicts being more personal for a Saint to take down and show everyone who’s the real boss. This isn’t even approached in the reboot at all. Building the Saints as a criminal empire from scratch made the journey to the very top feel hollow because there’s no tension or conflict that exists to overcome. The Marshalls dip into the plot here and here but are largely impersonal antagonists. The Idols don’t work at all as a big baddie because they’re too faceless and lack substance to pose a serious threat. The Panteros could fill this role pretty okay, they have a basic enough theming and a clear figurehead to latch onto, but this repeated the SR3 problem where this hardly amounted to anything and unceremoniously kills the bad buy before you could even have a chance to confront him one-on-one.

Which leads right into the game finally having a real antagonist whose sudden reveal left me more dumbfounded than it did as a shocking twist. The villain in question was not built up well for this revelation to strike and this happens way too late into the game’s climax that it appeared unintentionally awkward than anything. This is the point that the game takes an unusual turn by trying to be taken more seriously while Volition just accidentally discovered that the theme of this (barely a) story is about the apparent power of friendship I guess. Maybe this could’ve been effective if they rewrote the story to be better paced, had weight to it, and the new Saints had more than a semblance of real character. I would hate these guys as much as everyone else does but they’re just the byproduct of the way the tone and writing of the game just is. It feels like it's written by middle-aged-out-of-touch white guys trying to appeal to younger millennials and zoomers while harboring what feels like absolute resentment against this new generation they’re trying to drag in with the most boomer takes imaginable. Like think the kind of boomers or disgruntled old millennials who get weirdly too angry at young kids playing Fortnite, going on TikTok, and calling them out for saying the minimum wage in America shouldn't be raised higher because they're entitled and shut up. That's the vibe of the new Saints and the entire Idols faction. You get loyalty missions for each of the Saints but besides the LARPing one they don’t do a good job developing them to be better.

The worst thing about the Saints Row Reboot is that it’s just disposable and forgettable. It didn’t oversell itself and came out embarrassingly short like more infamous games of recent memory (though nothing game breaking the bugs I came across were kinda funny). It didn’t go out of its own way to change the foundation of Saints Row in any meaningful way. I doubt this even did its job as a reboot in attracting new fans because I can’t imagine any modern gamer looking at this in the aisle of their local GameStop and buying it. This isn’t exactly the mindlessly dumb dated mess that people liked in SR3/4. This doesn’t even feel like a true back-to-basics to earlier Saints Row beyond the premise you’re reading on this game’s page. It’s far too sanitized to appeal to either of these niches the fandom would eat up. It appealed to no one but Volition I guess and that may as well be what sealed the fate of Saints Row.

Eu definitivamente não tava esperando gostar desse jogo

É o seguinte, eu sou fã de Saints Row pra caramba, joguei o The Third, quatro e um pouco do 2 (pena que não deu pra zerar por conta dos crashs ridiculo no PC), foram incontável as vezes em que me diverti de montão com essa franquia, obviamente eu fiquei ''hypado'' pro Saints Row reboot quando o anunciaram mas desisti de jogar ele no lançamento já que muita gente falou que ele tava bugadasso e isso ai me desanimou.

Só que os anos passaram e agora eu dei uma chance pro Reboot dessa franquia que eu tanto amo, e o resultado foi bem diferente do que pensei: eu gostei MUITO desse jogo.

Achei tudo nele insanamente divertido, alguns falaram que o roteiro dele era porco mas sinceramente achei bom, claro que é um tanto desconectado ali um pouco as vezes, mas isso é um tanto comum em jogos de mundo aberto de missões desse tipo. Os personagens novos são carismáticos cada um com sua personalidade própria e jeitão próprio, é claro que no começo eu fiz cara de nojinho pra eles porque eu tinha um certo apego pelos personagens antigos e conhecidos da franquia, mas quando foi passando algum tempo eu comecei a criar afeto por eles e claro, pela conexão que eles tem com o protagonista.

Hoje em dia tem bastante bugs consertados e você quase não ve nenhum enquanto joga, aparece um e outro ali na questão gráfica e poucos na gameplay, mas não é nada que de fato te faça sei la perder save ou perder a paciência enquanto joga.

E as explosões.. cara elas tão perfeitas, e explosões querendo ou não faz parte da identidade do Saints Row e eles não falharam em deixar elas catastróficas e belas, o gráfico também ta muito bonito mas em alguns momentos o jogo fica meio feinho tenho que admitir, só que gráfico nunca foi muito o forte da franquia então não me importei tanto.

Dito isso tudo, joguem Saints Row se vocês gostarem de jogos desse tipo meio ''trashzao'' (não sei se existe um termo pra jogos assim), tenho certeza que irão amar a experiência que ele tem a oferecer ultimamente!

(ah.. e tem um sistema de personalização de personagem impecável.. da pra criar até o John Wick)

well *I* liked it a decent amount tbh.

not sure what was going on with both the pre-release promotion for this game or the broader reception to it since it dropped. i can understand complaints about the humor being inconsistent, the gameplay not seeing many shifts/improvements, and the like but this isn't some massive departure or something that one would expect given the reaction.

i wasn't a massive fan of the other Saints Row games i've played (bits of 1 with The Third and 4 in full, just 2 left to go) so with this feeling so similar you'd think it would tank the whole thing but it kinda worked. i think in context of playing this at this point in time when similar games in this wheelhouse have felt so serious and borderline joyless it almost approached feeling refreshing.

messy writing or not, i really enjoyed the friendship dynamic between the cast and i liked Neena and Kev a lot.

One of the most embarrassing and creative bankrupt games to come from this decade of video games
I love Saints Row to bits especially 2 and The Third, but this was a disgrace to the franchise.

Unpolished visuals that feel like they came out of 7th gen game, numerous game bugs, horrid attempt of humor on par with Borderlands 3, poor game design.
Just a shallow game that lacks substance and fun.

this game is an utterly fascinating look into the minds of people who want to tear away from establishment to forge their own destiny and identity. a group of young 20-to-30-somethings who use the ruins of what theyve found to try and rebuild something and failing thoroughly. the sheer vitriol this game exudes for what came before is palpable and i almost respect the vigor this game rewrites history with, but ultimately the end product is SO bad and so lazy that i cant sincerely say i do admire the attempt. so unfunny, so clunky and so much worse in every single way than every game that game before that the devs should be embarrassed by the anger they came at this franchise with.

The Saints Row reboot provides some fun to be had. However, it feels last-gen and lacking in different ways.


Saint Ileso provides a great wild-west location with some diverse scenery and locations. Characters (the new Saints crew) never connected with me during my playthrough. Many people will be divided on this aspect of the game and while I wanted to give the story a chance, I didn’t find the characters that much likeable (I won’t say I hated them, more like a “meh” feeling) compared to Shaundi, Gat or Pierce. Mission variety is okay, but comes off unstructured. Three rival gangs exist, but only one gang seems to be the focus.


Combat is the weakest aspect of the game. Shooting works but has a clunky and wonky feel to it. It felt closer to a late PS2, early 360 era third-person game compared to something more modern or refined such as Ghost Recon Wildlands, the Survivor Tomb Raider Trilogy or the Mafia trilogy. Several settings do exist to change the aiming controls and sensitivity, and of course damage does increase when upgrading weapons, but it could have used more refinement. Dodge-rolling and crouching are nice, but I can’t help but feel that a cover system would have helped to alleviate these issues. Melee works as expected with the option to purchase different melee weapons from gun shops, but don’t expect any variation beyond pressing R2 to attack. Instead of health recovering overtime, takedowns must be performed to regain health (similar to 3D beat-em-ups) when a bar fills up to 100% from gaining kills in combat.


Driving vehicles and flying helicopters works and has your typical arcade-like handling model. There’s a new sideswipe smash mechanic where you can press square to slam into vehicles, like an arcade style racing game Vehicle selection is diverse, even including go karts, golf karts, a hoverboard and monster trucks. Car customization has a lot of detail and upgrades available.


Criminal Ventures/Side Hustles are the diversions and side activities of the Saints Row reboot. Early in the game, you’ll gain access to a Criminal Ventures map. This allows you to place a venture in an area on the city’s map region dictating where you want to partake in specific ventures. Some fan favorites like Paparazzi, Fuzz, Snatch, and ho'ing yourself out are gone, while Insurance Fraud, Jimrob’s Garage (Chop Shop from SR2) and Ridin’ Shotgun (a modified version of Guardian Angel from SR3) return along with new ventures consisting of a mix of shooting and driving (mostly driving).


Many accessibility options and sliders exist such as enemy toughness level, vehicle combat difficulty, wanted level difficulty, ammo scarcity, and timed objective difficulty among other options to tailor your play experience.


As far as areas that the reboot gets wrong, stores are basically the only buildings that can be entered. No access to malls, casinos, strip clubs, bars, etc. unless you're playing a story mission. Given that the city has a diverse, wild-west look and feel to it, this is quite disappointing seeing that Saints Row 2 allowed you to enter multiple buildings. This is also one of those games where you must be up close and in a specific spot in order to interact with an object. The city can feel lifeless at times, though I'm not sure if this is something exclusive to the last-gen versions. Robbing stores is nonexistent. Graphics are nothing special. Character customization is mostly robust, with the option to switch between created/downloaded custom characters on the fly like Watch Dogs Legion and GTA V being the best aspect. Unfortunately, some basic clothing options are missing and while there are several stores throughout the city, most clothing options are the same.


Crashes and major bugs were minimal during my playthrough, but annoyances like interact points not appearing and my vehicle disappearing and teleporting me outside were rare, but frustrating when they occurred. Framerate was mostly stable (hovering around 30 fps) as one would expect from a PS4 game.


Saints Row is just average. Not bad but not great. Good, but nothing special or extraordinary. Provides some fun and a customizable challenge, but doesn't do anything super special or standout. Worth playing if you want a fun open world game to mess around in. Not worth it if you are looking for something that will blow you away.

A game Ryan Reynolds fans will love
Seems only fitting to have a game like this glitch out in the final scene. There are some good qualities here, but the unapologetic nature of this game seems to not be enough to excuse buggy gameplay and a tedious way to finish all missions. I got this game for free with my graphics card, no way I would pay full price for it.
Saints Row was one of my favorite franchises growing up. Saints Row 2 still being one of my favorite games and 3 as a worthy successor. It's sad to see it in the state it is right now, unworthy of calling itself a GTA contender. I doubt the Saints Row franchise will return to its former glory and that truly breaks my heart. It's too scared to take itselfs seriously and relies way to much on being "funny" and "memeable" while also failing tremendously at those goals. If you truly liked the movie Free Guy, you will probably love this game

This game isn't perfect, but it definitely gets way more hate than it deserves. The biggest downside of this game is the story, but not even for being poorly written. I wouldn't say there's anything real "cringe" dialogue, but the characters really don't make much of an impression throughout the main campaign, but there are some highlights still. Neenahs side missions did a lot to really endear me to her while Eli has a great multi part RP side quest that's a ton of fun. Kevin is the only real character that I feel falls flat. He really doesn't have any side missions or real moments that endear me to him, but he's not unbearable to be around. The other problem with the story is that since it's a reboot the whole game is centered around building the Saints as an organization, so the game ends where you feel that it should just be starting. Definitely all problems that could be sorted out if they were given the chance to do a sequel to it. Outside of the story problems, the game plays exactly like Saints Row and is just as fun as it was in the other 4 entries. Fuck Embracer for sabotaging the release of this game and shuttering Volition.

Despite skipping over an entire console gen, Volition managed to put out a Saints Row reboot that’s nearly indistinguishable from its predecessor from 11 years ago. It has the same clunky controls that’s still without a cover system, lackluster visuals with constant pop-in and similar janky physics, Santo Lleso is barren with next to nothing ever happening in it and NPCs that lack any reactivity (arguably worse than before since basic features like mugging and hold ups are missing), it has the same old mission design and repetitive side jobs, the same animations, etc. It would honestly be easy to mistake this for another entry from the 360/PS3 era and not something that released in 2022, though I suppose for some that might not be a bad thing if that’s what they wanted from it

This one follows a new crew of younger Saints as they form the gang from the ground up and take over. I guess the writing’s about on par with the others past SR2, which is to say it’s not good but doesn’t take itself seriously. The new characters were more like normal college friends than criminals who constantly shoot down waves of enemies and their dialogue was generally awkward, but they weren’t unlikable. The worst thing about the story is how it tries to build up a betrayal twist at the start which in no way was surprising and just rushes straight through it in the last 3 missions, but otherwise it’s fine and doesn’t take much time to finish at least

Basically those who liked SR3 (less so SR4 since it tones down the zaniness) and would just be satisfied with more of the same will probably get decent enjoyment out of this. But those who figured it would do anything more to set itself apart after all this time, well… it doesn’t. And the lack of polish in most areas, notable amount of bugs, and sheer lifelessness of its world bring it down further for me

I'm probably gonna get some form of shit over this but I really don't hate this game, granted it's not great. The writing is not great, a lot of it feels embarrassing; with most of it feeling like 40-year-olds trying to write for 20somethings, the new character are ok; I can't say I like them more than the original cast but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy their company.
The way the story is told is honestly all over the place, when I was at the halfway point of the story I didn't even know it until a character kills off one of the gang leaders in a cutscene. This brings up another topic I didn't like was the new gangs. They all have neat ideas to them and fun potential; but none of them have the time to be fleshed out since the game barely shows them besides 1. it reminds me a lot of SR3's gangs only there at least KillBane and Matt Miller had their own cutscenes showing their empires crumble along with them having a character. I can't tell you anything about the head of Los Panteros because he only shows up like 2 or 3 times, The Idols don't have leaders rather it's just a group of faceless anarchists. Only Marcal get's some screen time but even then I can't say much about the head of Marcal because he's just an angry CEO obsessed with money and power, that's it. The fact that SR3 did a better job with its villains is staggering and embarrassing.
the only other problem I have with the game is most of the side content feels very tedious compared to other SR games, making this SR one of the most unsatisfying 100% SR games. (well I can't say that since SR3 is standing right there but my point still stands)
Also yes this game is buggy as hell, is it as buggy as Cyberpunk and the GTA DE; hell no, is it still a buggy mess that can sometimes get in the way of enjoyment; yeah sometimes.

Now shockingly I enjoyed something from this game.
I felt like the new gameplay controls work a lot better, it felt like a good mix of the very loose feeling of SR2, and the more grounded third-person gameplay of SR3 and 4.
The customization in this game is outstanding, the character customizer may not be as good as SR2 still but it's much MUCH better than 3 and 4, vehicle and gun customization is the best this series has ever had and it's so impressive the number of options it can give you.
The map is also really well made and at times really beautiful, yeah yeah I know it looks like a PS3 game at times but I'm not as bothered by it as some other people are, I just think the level of detail and world-building they put into the city is just really impressive and it's a large improvement over SR3 and 4's Steelport, granted it feels very lifeless most of the time and there is a lack of a lot of interior locations, but just like the graphics I'm not as bothered by it.

for all of this game's faults, I still had a pretty fun time with the game. This game reminds me a lot of the first SR game, where it's a janky buggy mess with a pretty ok story and likable character, but more importantly it stands the groundwork for what SR2 did and it went hard.
If this game gets a sequel (which it probably won't) I could see an SR2 reboot that could be on the same level of quality as SR2. Granted I could just be crazy. but then again seeing people calling this the death of the SR games is overplayed, they said the same things about SR3,4, Gat out of Hell, and AOM. It's like a wojack meme at this point and just like Wojack memes it's not funny.

I went in with an open mind and Saints Row 2022 still managed to be worse than anything I could have expected.

The narrative isn't silly enough to justify how nonsensical a lot of the characters and world stuff are. It's also not grounded enough for me to care about the stakes it puts it's characters through. I never once cared for the dialogue spouted by the Ryan Reynolds wanabe protagonist. It's so so dull.

The gameplay is just tired third person shooter stuff, but it can't even get that right. Since SR 2022 feels notably worse than 10 year old games. Nothing much of value here.

I haven't even mentioned bugs yet. I'm usually someone who is very generous for bugs and glitches because they're so often either funny or non-intrusive. The bugs in Saints Row just mean core things like opening car doors won't work until you reboot your console. FUN STUFF.

I played 50 hours of this in coop only to have a trophy glitch on me. Dogshit game.

yknow, i gave this game a couple hours to get the feel of it. it got a couple laughs out of me (i can tell the writing had my age group of mid 20 year olds in mind), car explosions were spectacular. but the main take away was that...its just plain boring.

it has the ingredients to make a good or fairly okay saints row, but it seems like the passion was just no where at all. just a game to say, "hey! dont worry, we still think about saints row! heres a game to show we havent killed it entirely!"

it's a shame though we'll likely never see a two to try to fix the major problems this game faced. rip volition

Complete and utter waste of money and time, I can't even come up with a clever insult to describe my frustration with "Saints Row (2022)", frankly, it doesn't even deserve a clever insult, that'd be an insult to insults.

I myself, am a huge fan of the Saints Row games; Saints Row 2 is one of my favourite video games of all time, but why is that the case, you may ask? It has what you want in an open world game; fun gameplay, a great story, variety of activities, weapons, and customization, and a great open world map, I could ramble on and on about why I love this game. Sooooo, Violition, why couldn't you have done something like this again? Oh that's right, we don't actually care for the fans, we just want money!!!

For a "Saints Row" game, it hardly fucking feels like Saints Row, the gameplay and feel of everything is more reminiscence of smth like Agents of Mayhem, another Violition game which failed financially unfortunately. The combat is so clunky and overly complicated here, instead of having a simple aim and shoot mechanic that EVERY SINGLE Saints Row game had, they add all of these complicated systems; you can't even kill them in one hit, instead you have to drain their health bar, and then take them down with a long ass finishing move, this isn't fun at all, and it ruins the gameplay even more. If you can fuck up as something as simple as combat, you know you're already playing awful game.

The open world map? Well... I have mixed opinions on the map, it's beautifully designed, the scenery and layout of the map is hoenslty not that bad. Yeah, I don't mind the map, it's kind of fun to explore and to admire all the sceneries. My main problem with the map are the exact same complaints I have with Steelport in Saints Row 3 and 4; a lack of shit to do in them. There are no enterable buildings, no interesting NPCs doing various activities, no objects to pick up, throw, and use as a Melee weapon, no secret islands, no emotion whatsoever. It's kinda like marketing bait, the map fools you into thinking that there'll be alot of crazy shit to do in this huge environment, but really, there's absolutely nothing to do here. Yeah, the scenery is gorgeous, but that almost means nothing in the end when you go ahead and play the actual game to see what the map is like for yourself.

Ugh, and the story is just... well, I barely even pay attention to any of the shit that goes on in the story because it's just so awful. Basically, the premise is that you're a group of millinuenals, and you're working for a criminal organisation to pay off student loans... who the fuck approved this? Sir, I play video games to distract myself from life, not to be reminded that it sucks. All of the characters are insufferable af too, I can't remember the names of half of them and I don't even care to. It's the most anti-Saints Row I have ever seen and all of these characters just piss me off regardless, I garuentee even if you separated the Saints Row name away from the title, the entire game would still be an awful pile of shit. The story fails at being a Saints Row story, and it fails as a video game story in general.

I just want to say for the record, the reason why I'm mad about the game is not just because it isn't like the old games at all, I'm mad because the game itself is terrible. I could have at least forgiven the story if the game was fun. But it's not fun at all! There isn't any variety in any of the missions, it's all your typical "protect yourself in combat" or "protect your homie as they go from A to B". They're not fun at all, they're lazy and half-arsed, it pisses me off how this is all that they could come up with for a game called "Saints Row", a game franchise that is well-known for all of it's crazy shit that you can do in free roam and in the missions and activities.

It takes me alot to get angry at a piece of media, and I think this game managed to achieve that record. It's the laziest piece of shit I have ever played in my entire life, there's not one redeeming quality about it, I can't fathom why anyone in their entire life would be able to enjoy this game, it's lazy at best and corporate greed at worst, Violition and Deep Silver clearly have no respect for their dedicated fans who have stuck with them for nearly a decade and a half now, I simply have no respect for anyone behind this game, how can I support a video game when the company who made can't even show any proper dignity towards their fans, it makes me mad that they can get away with shit like this. People say that the franchise couldn't get any worse after 3 and 4, I won't deny that Saints Row 4 did feel more like a bizarre paordy of the Saints Row games than an actual true Saints Row sequel, but I was at least able to unironically enjoy the gameplay and ironically enjoy the story for how wacky, ridiculous, and non-sensical it is, and Saints Row 3 was unironically alot of fun too, even if it felt like a downgrade from the previous game. This game? There's nothing to admire about it, I didn't enjoy anything about it, not even on the most ironic levels, it wasn't even "so bad it's good", it was "so bad it's bad", it's an insult to longtime fans, and it's insult to the gaming industry in general. Don't buy this game, period.

I'm one of the few people that saw how bad this game looked, watched how bad it played, heard how bad it sounded, read how badly it was written, and still wanted it to turn out to be good.
It's not.

I am by no means a Saints Row fan, and I have a lot of issues with the games, but at their core they were still fun to play even if a lot of it could be cringe and some stuff doesn't hold up at all. So a reboot could be cool, especially since a lot of people long for the days of SR2 and even 3.

Unfortunately, this is more like a bunch of people looked at the franchise and said "Saints Row sucks. I can do better", then took a sledgehammer to everything outside of the color purple. There's nothing left but the writer's ego.

Gunplay is bad, driving is bad, writing is worse, everything just feels so bland and soulless I'd believe you if you told me it was AI generated.
I couldn't care less about the bugs if anything in this game was fun, but it just isn't. Even without comparing to previous SR titles or any other GTA-like, the game just isn't fun.

$100 million down the drain, countless crunch hours wasted, and this is the final result.
"Sad" is the only thing to say about it.