A disappointing followup to everything that made Saints Row 2 work. Just when the groundwork for the series felt like it's been perfectly fertilized, finally giving Saints Row a unique identity, Volition went out of their way to disregard it. It’s almost like a dire omen of what’s coming in the game opening with the Saints returning with their newfound excessively commercialized lives as “gangsters” in everything but name. Right from the get-go I knew I wasn’t going to like this based on how the presentation felt superficial, dated, and cheap. It’s almost fascinating playing this in the good ol’ year of 2022 because the tone and humor has aged not the best. The tight balance between absurdism and realism perfect by SR2 is not even bothered to be matched here. I wondered why Volition would even take this direction in the first place but then I remembered Borderlands was popular around the time and suddenly everything made perfect sense. Ironically, by trying to desperately distance themselves further from being associated with GTA has only caused Saints Row to feel more confused and flanderized.

Nothing you might’ve loved about Saints Row 2 remains here. Anything that does only shares a hollow passing resemblance that’s been stripped down for the worse. Customization was easily the best part about SR2 and it’s depressing to see how much of it got butchered here. The character creator is limited in creating the weirdly specific yet accurate protagonist you want. Buying clothes in this game feels like a waste because they lack variety in the kinds of styles you can wear to further customize. A lot of them are just “ecksdee so random” clothes with little to offer beyond that to feel rewarding. Even the crib and gang customization feels like a downgrade because you can’t really change up your player homes that much.

Steelport is mediocre. As an open-world sandbox it pales in comparison with how lively Stillwater was, right down to the unmemorable districts and needless open-world additions of giant signs pointing which direction you’re supposed to drive to and waypoints centered right on the screen. What made Stillwater so cool was how it felt like a map dominated by different factions that you need to steer clear of and take over one at a time. It’s a solid approach to gradually unraveling the open-world to the player as a sandbox worth fucking around in. There’s nothing in Steelport that carries the same sense of progression in dominating other gangs and claiming your mark on the map. It’s not worth trying to dick around for much mindless fun here because the side activities feel lacking and enemies are bullet sponges. I guess the biggest compliment I can give it is that the driving is decent and seems like maybe the biggest improvement from SR2 in how smooth it feels to control. But what hampers it ties back to how Steelport is boring to explore in and vehicle customization also feels stagnant. Also Pierce's AI somehow got even WORSE than it was in SR2.

I’d try to pick apart the story, but that’d imply there was one to begin with. I’m not really exaggerating when I say there’s like the most shredded paper scraps of a plot going on beyond the opening of the game which is never taken full advantage of in creating narrative momentum. It’s meandering, poorly paced, and downright lazy with how uncreative the main missions are by just being side activities they recycled with the occasional super gimmicky mission to show off how “haha funny lol random ecksdee” it can get which got predictable as it did annoying. There’s only very few that I enjoy, mostly the entire mission where you jump out of the helicopter while crashing a penthouse party guns blazing while Power by Kanye West plays which is fucking fire. Uh, I guess that weird DLC with the Johnny Gat clone was some mindless fun because it gave you ridiculous super powers? Everything else feels like a downturn because the gameplay isn’t too good and the story never bothers to actually try, which is insanely disappointing because SR2’s story is so good. You don’t care about the Saints like you did previously because there’s not a lot of time spent with them personally to feel close. You especially don’t care about the villains because the game can’t even decide which one is the central antagonist before they just give up and you never really confront them personally like you did in SR2. It’s not even to say you can’t take the chess pieces that are already placed on the board here and rearrange them to form a stronger narrative that lived up to the heights of SR2. Like after the events of SR2, The Saints became drunk on their newfound fame and power and as a result went from a respectable scrappy gang to just an over-glorified shameless brand. This would’ve helped justify the change felt in the game’s opening as something intentionally satirical to show how far these guys have fallen since we last saw them. It would’ve made the death of a certain character actually matter because it’s the reality check they needed when they immediately plummeted back to the bottom to realize how they need to rebuild themselves as certified Saints once more. It might’ve given SR3 a more meaningful place in the series because it’s when Volition could’ve just stopped desperately trying to distance themselves from the inescapable stigma of being a “lesser” GTA clone and just accept it while playing into what made SR2 feel special. I don’t expect too much in telling a story in a game like this but it at least has to do something with it rather than nothing at all.

I understand that this game has its own fans, apparently being the most commercially successful entry in the series, and I could even see some of the appeal for people who were okay with this sharp turn of a direction. But being too unabashedly stupid to compensate for how little it offers doesn’t sit right with me as someone who loved Saints Row 2, and wanted something that faithfully followed its footsteps.