Fun to come back to but a glitchy mess

Saints Row the 3rd or Saints Row 3 was my first entry into the series. It was a game I enjoyed so much I went back to play 1 and 2 because I wanted more. Some people call this the best Saints row and while I don't 100% agree with that, I do think this game comes in at a close 2nd place next to 2 with 2 being the best and if you are someone who doesn't care and just hasn't played any of these games and are wondering if 3 is a good place to start I can tell you why this game is still great too.

Gameplay: Saints Row 3 much like the previous is a 3rd person open world GTA style shooter game. It has qualities of a GTA Clone like 2 did (and 1 was just a pure clone). Saints Row 3 absolutely feels like a very different experience compared to any of the grand theft Auto games. It's based on the same idea but when 2 came along and started to introduce newer qualities that makes for a unique experience saints row 3 took all of those things and ran with them. This game changes a lot, you could argue this game is a soft reboot of the franchise with how different the characters are, location, theme and gameplay. This time around you don't need to complete activities to gain respect you can just do the story at your own free will. For most this is a welcome change but the con to it is some of the main story missions have just become activities which to me is dummer than having to level up a respect Meter. Especially since most of this game’s activities are much easier than the previous games. Speaking of activities, most of the great activities like Fuzz and septic avengers from 2 are gone and while a lot of classic ones like escorts and insurance fraud are still here and much improved but the new modes, we got were well "meh" for me. One of them is a show called "professor Genki’s super clima".. well, whatever let's just call it the Japanese game show because that's what it is but where you kill people dressed as mascots and furries and as funny and satisfying as that is its still kinda lame compared to previous activities. I personally don't hate this one but other activities like Helli assault which is where you destroy stuff in a helicopter aren't terrible but not specifically great or memorable either. The activities in this game range from fun to meh and I mean I guess all these games work like that so I guess I can say saints row 3 doesn't pull any major strides in the activities category. Gun and weapon wise we have some awesome over the top guns that are cool and fun to use but then there are definitely less guns and a lot of them are very overpowered, especially upgraded. Infact once you unlock and buy all abilities you will find yourself almost a bit bored with how overpowered you become. This game adds a lot of new abilities and smooth movements that I wish the other games had. Like jumping into a car and kicking the person out all in one jump, the new run and grapple melee move sets where you do a wrestling grapple move to take down basically anyone you want. These smooth and fun movement systems and combat styles only add to the unique experience and definitely makes for a fun open world experience. I can't tell you how many hours my friends and I put into just terrorizing the city of steal port for fun just like we did in SR2. The zombie island is probably the most fun location to kill things on, but it overall feels under used. Another huge aspect of saints row is the character customization for your version of the boss and man is it pretty good. A lot of clothing and feature variety along with basically any color you want for anything. I remember my friends and I would change our bosses into other video game characters like Wesker from Resident evil and it was always hilarious. Oh, and just like the previous games both the remastered and original SR3 are glitchy as hell. The game crashes almost every other time I play it, especially co-op and I ran into some glitches where I either couldn't continue the story or activities i was on. One time I was able to do some wacky shit like accidentally drive a car upstairs into the penthouse, A few times buildings disappeared on me too.

Graphics, voice acting & music: graphically this game looks fine, especially on the remastered version if that’s the one you are playing. Everything got re-entered and remodeled but even the original looked fine for its time. The art style of 3 would end up being the style for the series going forward for a while with a mix of grunge, goth, BDSM, wrestling and furry/ mascots...? It's funny and weird and I'm all for it. I think making the style change was a good direction considering in this aspect as it feels different than what we see in gta but the world itself feels a bit bland. Most of Steel is a boring mash up of the worst and best parts of New York, Chicago and Detroit with little in-between. Map wise it feels smaller (though im sure it’s probably not) than saints row 2 or its at least a less creative and fun Map to explore. I think it's safe to say most people prefer still water by far. The voice acting is pretty great, and the dialogue is okay with some funny stuff from time to time. The voices you get to pick from in this game are great and the special zombie voice is actually really funny and changes the dialogue in some of the cutscenes. The music in this game is great, I personally felt like everything on the radio was a banger or at least just funny to have playing in a car while driving around causing Mayhem.

Story/ SPOILERS: it's hard to talk about the story in this game without spoiling anything since for a lot of people this is where this franchise goes wrong, so let's dive right into it. This game takes place some years after 2 and the saints have become pop culture icons and have a store with merch along with a soda brand... yeah kinda dumb since they were legit gang bangers in the last game but whatever. Basically, they decide to rob a new bank in Stillwater one day and realize it's owned by a crime Syndicate called The Morning Star, which consists once again of 3 gangs. The nacho libra's, Watch Dogs DeadSec but emo and the French man from the matrix reloaded (not what they are actually called but basically what they are). Within the first couple missions they decided to kill off the fan favorite gang member johnny Gat in a vague way where he could come back but also not really. (In the remastered version im pretty sure they remove his body from a short cutscene where its shown) I guess they did this so the player would hate the new crime Syndicate, but I think all it did was make people hate 3s story. I will say though some of the missions and gear you get throughout this game are absolutely bad ass and fun, but a vast majority of the missions are just rehashed activities which is a huge let down. I guess this is the tradeoff of removing the respect Meter from being able to continue missions and I think it's part of the reason I prefer the mission lock system from 1 and 2 better. This game also brings back the idea of having a 4th antagonist but instead of Altor it's this wacky futuristic military organization called STAG and honestly, I kinda hate them and their entire involvement in the story feels out of place. Most of this game’s story is pretty linear compared to past entries but you do get the ability to choose different outcomes in the story at certain points which is fun and adds replay value. The new characters for the most part are a hit or miss just like a lot of the new changes SR3 brings. A lot of old characters, like Shandi are basically new characters with the number of changes they went through before the events of this game. The DLCs were pretty fun to play. Both of them seem to introduce all the ideas they had for the sequel. Like superpowers, aliens and the whole thing being a movie which is explored more in the sequel. All of these concepts are fun as a DLC and probably should have stayed in that category or become its own spin off franchise but we will get more into that on a 4 review.

Overall Saints Row the 3rd is a good game and even a fun game at its best that changes saints row into a unique franchise that feels distant from its GTA clone criticism but it also takes away some key aspects that made saints row 2 so good. At its worst this version of this game was a glitchy mess, which is sad because I can tell a lot of work was put into this remaster.

7.5/10