It came, it went, it left no good reason for its existence.
Those who think that the downfall of Saints Row started in 2022 (it didn't- hot take, the reboot was the best one since SR3) have seemingly forgotten that this and Agents of Mayhem existed, and I don't blame them. You can hardly forget the third and fourth entries in the series- they are, for better and for worse, the legacy this series has left for itself in the eyes of many- but you can easily forget this, a mere afterthought to SR4, an overinflated DLC, and somehow an attempted escalation of SR4, when SR4 was and is viewed by the company who made it as the Point of No Return and No Further Escalation (!).
By this point any semblance of believability and reasonability Gat might have had from the first 2 games (I'm assuming he had them, anyway, as I have not played the first 2, nor do I have the means to) has been sandblasted in favour of cheap gags. By this point any narrative reason that the player might have to complete all its side content has been abandoned, and the devs know this! They have a cutscene basically saying this! By this point, in short, the grand, decadent, messy party SR4 (and of course, to a lesser extent, SR3) threw had long since given way to the not unpleasant but hollow aftertaste of the birthday cake and the thoroughly unpleasant moment when one realizes, "oh fuck, I'm old".
This franchise did indeed feel old by 2015. After assuming several different identities in such a brief period of time- GTA clone, GTA clone which leaned into more arcade-ish tendencies, open world urban crime game shot in the arm with late 2000s-early 2010s Borderlands-esque we-browse-the-Internet-and-think-we-can-fake-what's-cool-among-young-people-well-enough humour (this last one feeling somehow only slightly iterated on in 4 with a Crackdown-aping superpower system)-it had been wearing this last mask for too long, and it appeared with Gat Out of Hell that it would become its death mask, save for an odd spinoff that justifies its existence even less than this one, Agents of Mayhem.
People do not realize why the reboot was necessary, or even that it was necessary at all, tonally and from a gameplay perspective. This game singlehandedly demonstrates why it was necessary. I do not need to argue the point any further: this game argues it for me.
I did have a medium portion size of fun with it, though, not gonna lie.
Those who think that the downfall of Saints Row started in 2022 (it didn't- hot take, the reboot was the best one since SR3) have seemingly forgotten that this and Agents of Mayhem existed, and I don't blame them. You can hardly forget the third and fourth entries in the series- they are, for better and for worse, the legacy this series has left for itself in the eyes of many- but you can easily forget this, a mere afterthought to SR4, an overinflated DLC, and somehow an attempted escalation of SR4, when SR4 was and is viewed by the company who made it as the Point of No Return and No Further Escalation (!).
By this point any semblance of believability and reasonability Gat might have had from the first 2 games (I'm assuming he had them, anyway, as I have not played the first 2, nor do I have the means to) has been sandblasted in favour of cheap gags. By this point any narrative reason that the player might have to complete all its side content has been abandoned, and the devs know this! They have a cutscene basically saying this! By this point, in short, the grand, decadent, messy party SR4 (and of course, to a lesser extent, SR3) threw had long since given way to the not unpleasant but hollow aftertaste of the birthday cake and the thoroughly unpleasant moment when one realizes, "oh fuck, I'm old".
This franchise did indeed feel old by 2015. After assuming several different identities in such a brief period of time- GTA clone, GTA clone which leaned into more arcade-ish tendencies, open world urban crime game shot in the arm with late 2000s-early 2010s Borderlands-esque we-browse-the-Internet-and-think-we-can-fake-what's-cool-among-young-people-well-enough humour (this last one feeling somehow only slightly iterated on in 4 with a Crackdown-aping superpower system)-it had been wearing this last mask for too long, and it appeared with Gat Out of Hell that it would become its death mask, save for an odd spinoff that justifies its existence even less than this one, Agents of Mayhem.
People do not realize why the reboot was necessary, or even that it was necessary at all, tonally and from a gameplay perspective. This game singlehandedly demonstrates why it was necessary. I do not need to argue the point any further: this game argues it for me.
I did have a medium portion size of fun with it, though, not gonna lie.