I finally decided to try the first game. This may be one of the most deserving games of a remake. The gameplay itself is fine, but it is extremely tedious to play through and levels are mostly barebones. Respect takes extremely long to earn, there are no level checkpoints, and smaller aspects from the modern Saints Row games are missing but deserve to be there. Have no idea why they didn't just remake this instead of making a lazy reboot. Story itself I think is great and somewhat necessary to know before playing SR2.