It's not easy to review this game, but I'll try my best.

Purely speaking from a gameplay perspective and nothing else? The game is alright. It's got what you'd expect of a regular Saints Row game (Excluding the sheer AWESOME insanity that was SR4 and Gat out of Hell, I'm talking about the more "normal" SR games, 1, 2, and 3). This one is more along those lines. No super powers, no zany weapons like the dubstep gun, inflato-ray or black hole gun. It does have it's own array of cool vehicles, cool guns, cool abilities and cool enemy variety within the gangs, and a cool city to explore.

I'd say if you see it on sale, there's worse ways you could spend the few meager dollars it'll cost you.

Where the game fails to deliver is in other areas. Namely, the writing is pure cringe. The new crew is clearly meant to be the "Younger and hipster" replacements of the people we know and love. Except, Eli is nowhere near as funny as Pierce, Keving is NOWHERE near as badass as Gat, and Neenah is not even remotely close to being as cute and as sassy as Shaundi. So what you're left behind with, are pale imitations of the real thing that feel watered down and very VERY cringe.

The sound design of this game is absolutely horrid too. It's all too normal to drive around without hearing the sound of your vehicles at all, which is just plain wrong. The soundtrack is nothing to write home about. All the guns I've managed to try so far sound like toy guns when you fire them (no BANG-BANG, more like "clickety-clicky"). And the vehicle handling is floaty and all over the place in the few vehicles I've been able to try.

The gangs you face are mildly better than the ones from SR3, but still nowhere near as awesome as the ones from SR 1 and 2. One of them REALLY stretches the definition of a "Gang", because seriosuly, Marshall Industries is a PMC. Come on.

But at the end of the day, so long as you go in NOT expecting this to be a worthy successor to the beloved Saints Row series, and also buy it on a sale? It's an okay game to indulge your open world OCD if you want to. The Character Creator is so flexible and complex you can recreate virtually anyone you can think of, and you can also share and download other player versions of The Boss via an easy menu. I've seen all manner of pop culture icons faithfully recreated here, from Shaggy of Scooby Doo fame, to John Wick.

Also the city of Santo Ileso is pretty to explore, jam packed with collectives to collect, side-activities to perform, and a wide variety of enemies to face, and as horrid as the writing is, there's the odd joke here and there that will manage to land.

TL;DR: As long as you pretend this isn't a Saints Row game, let alone a successor to the spectacular Saints Row 4, and you bought it during a sale? it's a perfectly decent game that manages to neither be award-worthy, nor scorn-worthy.

As a stand alone game judged on his own merits and divorced entirely from it's predecessors? This is a solid 6/10 Very Slightly above average.

As a Successor to the franchise however? A 1/10. Gat would bully these so-called "saints", take their lunch money, give'em a wedgie, a wet willy, and send them back home crying to mommy. So take my "Recommended" with a VERY mild pinch of salt.

Available in Epic for free go and claim it

This game killed Volition.

Okay. So I want to start off and say that I sort of get why there's a bit of a divide on this game.

Tonally, this game fits somewhere between Saints Row 2 and Saints Row 3. It's middle of the road, and doesn't succeed at being overwhelmingly funny, and it doesn't succeed at telling an extremely good story, which 3 and 2 respectively were pretty good at. It really needed to go further than it actually did, and I think this would have been a real classic.

That being said, I don't think it's as awful as people say it is. While I encountered some minor bugs, they weren't as bad as people said. I found the gunplay alright, the driving alright, and it was fun to play overall. The only time I can think of the gameplay being bad was a forced stealth section, given the game has no stealth, and it never comes up again afterwards. Other than that? It was solid enough, and I was invested enough to get through the whole game. Well, I say "whole game", I ended with 47% completion.

I think the game at least deserves more credit than people are giving it overall. I found fun with it, and it's not at a bad price atm, being only $30. Even more if you catch it on a sale. It's not perfect, it's not a classic, but I think it's worth your time. It's at least better than a lot of the more boring sandbox games that have plagued gaming for a bit.

However, I'll say this: Give the game a chance. I see a lot of people give up around the 2-3 hour mark, but after you get over a hump in the beginning of the game, things REALLY open up and get more fun. I think that might be why it leaves more of a bad taste in peoples' mouths, that hump is admittedly tiresome to get through.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5)

After 38 hours in Saints Row, I can say that the reboot brings a mix of chaotic fun and some missed opportunities. While it captures the spirit of the series, it feels like it doesn’t fully embrace what made the franchise great. Here’s what I think:

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The gameplay is filled with over-the-top action, allowing for wild antics and mayhem. I enjoy the extensive character and vehicle customization options, which add a personal touch to my experience. However, many missions feel repetitive and a bit too familiar, lacking the creativity that defined earlier titles.

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The environments are vibrant and visually appealing, but they often lack the depth and interactivity that would elevate the experience. While there are plenty of opportunities for chaos, I found myself wishing for more activities and events to explore, as the world sometimes feels underutilized.

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The story introduces a new cast of characters, but they range from engaging to forgettable. Some characters shine with personality, while others feel underdeveloped. The humor, which is a staple of the series, is a mixed bag, with some jokes landing and others feeling flat.

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Saints Row would benefit from more variety in missions and side activities. Additional quests and unique challenges would keep the gameplay fresh, as some parts tend to drag on longer than necessary, leading to a sense of repetition.

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After 38 hours, Saints Row is an entertaining experience, but it struggles to fully define its identity within the franchise. If you enjoy open-world games with a bit of humor and customization, it’s worth a look, but it may not capture the magic of its predecessors.

I recommend giving Saints Row a try for some chaotic fun!

Recommended for fans of open-world action and customization!

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Originally posted by deelt:

If you found this review helpful or enjoyable, please give it a like or an award! Thanks for reading, and enjoy the chaos in Saints Row!

I’m a huge SR fan, playing and replaying the original and the masterpiece that is SR2 all the way back on the Xbox 360 and man, when this reboot came out I couldn’t believe the fiasco that it was. No Shaundi, Pierce, Kinzie or Gat, no Stillwater or Steelport, badly rendered cartoonish graphics, plagued with glitches and well, it was also delayed several months and still came out terrible.

...so why is this a positive review? Because, my friends, the state of this game now in 2024 is genuinely good, decent even! I’m having so much fun with it and I felt the absolute need to write this review to maybe coerce convince people to give it a go!


I found myself caring about them and being invested in their loyalty stories, like Neenah with her project car, Kevin wanting to get the fast food toy he never had as a kid and Eli’s LARPing mission which is seriously fanfookingtastic, I highly recommend it if you’re vaguely familiar with DnD which, well, in today’s day and age how can you not at least have heard about it? Anyway, the main issue is that we had four games with the old crew and it is difficult to care for the new college kids especially now that we’re older than it is caring for Pierce and singing in the car with him 10+ years ago. I felt the same way about Mass Effect Andromeda and its new characters after an incredible trilogy; replacing what is familiar to us is already a very risky move and risky is what this game is to its core.

People claim that the new characters are obnoxious, cringeworthy and that they’re not what Saints Row ‘is’… well, remember the huge tone shift from SR2 to SR3? People said the exact same thing. The series hasn’t been ‘serious’ since then people, come on. Also, we were younger during the time of their release and I can safely say the humour is still very much same, just in the 2020s instead of the late 2000s/early 2010s. We’re older, it’s fine.

You can enable speech bubbles that make the city even more alive because the stuff the people say is legit ridiculous, like one guy desperate he’s gonna miss his stand-up session or some dude talking about a dog’s butt glands. It IS funny; maybe not for everyone my age but to me, I am having a blast with the humour and the new gang is completely fine.


Did they deliver with the writing this time? To me at least, ish. The writing isn’t jaw-dropping but it’s not your usual ironic angsty teenager jokes, just very influenced by… well, influencers but that isn’t terrible like people exaggerate when it comes to this game. To me, the Idols are just what Matt Miller’s gang, the Deckers are in today’s day and age consumed by social media instead of what was popular in 2011 and such but the dark comedy is still Saints Row, it is still has the same edge and more, for better or worse.

The main issue to me is how poorly paced the game is. It starts very well with an insane mission to get us familiar with the controls and guess what? We’re chasing a guy on top of a fighter jet! HOW IS THIS NOT A SAINTS ROW MISSION?
What comes next is a couple more grounded missions explaining how our roommates, which by the way, are already all criminals, turn into a gang. I think it felt a bit forced to shoehorn the creation of the Saints too early on but I didn’t feel it was out of place, just rushed to that point of the story, which what I think are all very similar to what the older games did – totally bonkers in every sense of the word.


The shooting is a bit hit and miss (heh) but overall satisfying, especially with that glorious handcannon just exploding people’s brains like it’s nothing and it is what you’ll be doing the most. I’ve seen people talking about how bulletspongy the enemies are and do I have the solution for you!

You can adjust the game’s difficulty to your liking in the options menu.

I don’t know if this was already an option on release but right now you can just make the enemies die in a couple shots, lower their damage and MORE! I made the game feel even more FUN with zero frustrations but with a dash of challenge; those dang Marshalls during the @TCHA missions are a pain.
Oh, you can even remove the timed missions so the insurance fraud goals don’t seem impossible to get! The accessibility is THAT good. I was impressed and I hope every game has the same accessibility from now on. If I want a high but fair challenge I can go play Fromsoftware games, not waste my entire ammo on a single armoured enemy here. lmao

The side-missions are cool for what they are. Again, this isn’t the exceptional Saints Row 2 (have you noticed how much I love SR2?) but decent enough to have fun with it. I personally like the Davey ones where you just shoot people while he drives. Look, man, I just sit on the top of a car and shoot bad guys without having to worry about anything; I’m a simple man, I just wanna shoot and explode cars.

The collectables are your run-of-the-mill stuff like taking pictures of places, collecting drugs some people left over unsupervised for some reason with some garbage hunting that Stelle/Caelus from HSR would be proud of. It’s hilarious seeing my character just dive in head first into a dumpster and find money, golden parts for a truck and more. What in the heck is this?? It’s Saints Row humour yet again delivering.

You have the good ole ‘go there and kill that guy’ missions but with some backstory that reminds me of the old GTA public telephone missions, remember those? Here there’s a WANTED app for you to pick and choose people to kill and some reasoning to it... as if you needed any, you monster.

Also the driving is fine, it felt very SR2 due to how heavy the cars feel but drifting is fantastic to do and the cars all look pretty nice! Talking about nice...


MAN OH MAN THE CUSTOMIZATION IS OFF THE CHAIN HOOK!!! You can tune cars, tune guns, tune yourself, tune your gang, change your appearance on the go and even place collectibles inside the base. The options are insane; just today I tuned a truck to look like (and drive like) Darkside from Twisted Metal and well, you can even put a gigantic spoiler on the truck, nitrous and an off-road upgrade.

I spent a good couple of hours tuning different cars because it’s just fun as hell. It’s so easy to lose track of time if you’re into this sort of thing. Also, there’s a LOT of shops around the city of Santo Ileso to get new clothes, tattoos and guns so make sure to visit all of them because they have different options! I feel I can pinpoint exactly where Volition were doing this with a purpose and when they knew the studio was going to close down because man, there is a soul in this game, as sappy as I am being right now but I am having so much fun with this.


I’m genuinely in love with this game and it is what I was expecting a new Saints Row to be like, especially after the pure insanity SR4 was! I can understand why people dislike it but treating it as the worst game of all time ain’t it. I haven’t played the DLCs yet but I’m super looking forward the DnD one because during the Eli mission to conquer a fort, there’s a treasure with a plaque pointing to it saying MIMIC and if you interact with, it goes “arghhh monster noises” and I love it. Oh yea, during the LARP mode you don’t ‘kill’ anyone, their ‘characters’ die instead like the Necromancer who you cannot shoot before you deal with her thralls and her mass revive spell. LMAO

Don’t go in expecting a AAA release, there’s still glitches like when I was stealing a car that didn’t load its textures or the overpowered fire hydrants that launch even trucks into the air. The ragdoll physics are hilarious and well, as you can already picture, I have very few bad things to say about it even with its Mixed reviews.

Grab it on sale!

4/3/25 (I played this mostly on Epic)

Saints Row 2022 is a mess of a game.
Started as Saints Row 5 in 2015, it went through a rough development.
Making a soft reboot, to making a full reboot, the game went through lots of rewrites, people leaving and eventually new Volition members ended up working on the game that never touched Saints Row 1 or 2, and making the game geared for The Third fans due to it being the best selling.
It was a failure. The game was panned due to it's bad writing, failing to promise to make it for OG Fans and it releasing in a buggy state, and caused Embracer to close Volition's doors right after they finished support due to awful sales and reception.

Story : Hipsters take over the Row.
It follows your Boss, a person working for this Ultor-esk Company called Marshall, and the story mainly being about you and your 3 other Roommates figuring out how their gonna pay rent.
Your character gets fired after a botched job as Security for this "Humming Bird Codex" artifact (which is ment to be the book from Gat out of hell(?)) and starts his own Gang called The Saints to take over the city of Santo Iliso with your Roommate pals.

The story is awful honestly, it's just back to SR3 writing where it's more-so comedic and satire. It's bad jokes, cringy dialogue and just full of Gen-Z writing. The cast is nothing like the OG Saints either, they are annoying, just not interesting and are just plainly hipsters.
You got Nina, who is a Mechanic, Kevin who is a chef who doesn't like Shirts, and Eli, who is a smart one in the group.
Rather then like the OG Saints which would drink 40oz and talk about tits, these guys would rather talk about the current economic climate and drink Mamosas.
It's not "WOKE" as people would call it, it's just basically "What if Hipsters started a gang lol"
Although the majority of name chances show otherwise.
Freckle ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is now named FBs with no logo, Rimjobs is Jim Robs, like the crude humor is just gone from this version.

The gangs are also never expanded on much, and just exist.
You got the Panteros which are kinda just a version of the Brotherhood from SR2.
Idols which just are bootleg Deckers from SR3.
Nuwale which are never seen in game at all, except a few missions but they are kinda like the Cartel from SR1.
And Marshall, which is just Ultor.
They have barley any originality and you don't even get to kill the leader of the Panteros, he's killed of by someone else in a cutscene! It's so unsatisfying having someone shown off so much as a jerk and targeting you, and doing missions to piss them off then not being able to even off him.

Your Boss lacks any form of personality also, he is just a guy who casually likes killing people.
Unlike SR3 which is about him taking charge or SR2 where he is just wanting revenge and power hungry, this version is just a Hipster who is like "Yeah, the murder business is not bad."

4/10
The writing is terrible honestly. The people who wrote this had no idea what the series was about and sorta just made stuff up, and insulted people who complained about it with a "Haters gotta hate" gif on Twitter.

Gameplay : Saints Row The Third but better.
Honestly, the gameplay is great.
The game is basically SR3 but more polished. Movement is fluid, driving is great and the combat is fun. Most of the guns use SR3 designs also, and have weapon skins returning from SR4.
They went for more of a RPG kinda thing, where you level your boss up by doing missions and can select different abilities, and you'll get buffs and different perks / buffs on your levels. You can always adjust the difficulty to different perameters and disable them basically though, even removing enemy health bars for a SR3 sorta gameplay.

Character customization is basically like SR2 mixed with 3, and has a lot of options and things to personalize your character. They even had the Boss Factory returning from SR3 and 4, until the servers for it went defunct and people got creative and made lots of designs and characters.
Music is alright too, along with the Radio stations.

The Open world is huge also, being basically a mix between New Mexico and Las Vegas. Santo Iliso was inspired by one of the writer's hometowns, where they wanted to make a Texas sorta map. So, we got a hybrid basically of New Mexico/Texas/Las Vegas, where you got a traditional town, a downtown with a Casino District and suburban areas. Along with a outback desert sorta area to explore. It's a bit empty sometimes but it feels like a Southern version of Stilwater honestly, just due to it's connection to the mainland and locations. I actually enjoyed exploring the open world. One of the things is a Wingsuit they kept showing off in Promo materal, but I honestly never used it.
Sadly not much interiors to explore though. But the setting and world looks nice.

The OG SR stuff is back also, like Gang Customization from 2, Homies, and Car garages and customization.
Sadly, other then the Church, the only Crib in the game is DLC part of Heist and Hazardous.
No mod support also, has a EULA and no mod tools have ever been released which is heartbreaking.

You also got Front systems returning from SR2, part of Real Estate which change the open world and have unique missions, along with side missions like Insurance Fraud and Mayhem making a return with them.

And yes, 2 Player Coop is supported this time around. You can play with friends.
With Emote wheels, a Pranking system where you can mess with friends mid-game and sharing progression.

8/10
The gameplay is solid, it's still a bit buggy sometimes but it's pretty good. Honestly I was expecting it to be a complete trainwreak but it has lots of options for versatility and it's really fun to play with friends.

Graphics : Basically it's a mix between SR2 and 3 Visuals.
It's sorta a Realistic artstyle but still has cartoony elements like SR2.
I don't mind it. Also has Raytracing support and runs suprisingly smooth. I only had very few hiccups.
Your boss can look a bit ugly sometimes but other then that, the game looks and runs fine.

7/10

Verdict : Bad story, but great gameplay.
The game's writing is Awful. But I had fun!
Honestly, the series went down hill after SR2. They had plans for sequels and prequels after 1 but didn't know what they wanted to do after that was lucrative. So, after SR2, the series went downhill.
3 was jank, 4 was a DLC turned Game and sucked, GAH wan't bad but meh, and Agents of Mayhem was a fun spinoff but killed off too early.
This is kinda just a example of the series not really having a identity. It doesn't know how to really continue.
As a Embracer higherup said "The era of throwing money at GTA Clones is gone, which is why it was a business decision to close Volition"
But it wasn't a smart move, because now we have no more Red Faction or new IPs from them. And the SR2 Patch is just dead in the water due to Idolninja's Passing (May he Rest in peace) so this marks the last in the series, sadly. It ended on such a low note, but the gameplay shows that Volition was good at making the game fun and playable, but didn't know how to write for it and wasn't sure on a direction story-wise.

The game gets a 6/10.
I'd recommend it for people wanting a timewaster with friends or who like Saints Row, but that's about it. If you want a introduction to the series, play SR2 with the Gentlemen of the row patch or Saints Row 3, or emulate 1 on Xenia.
But I say try it out on sale if your curious, goes dirt cheat for like, $4 base and $7 Gold.

Is it a great game? Nah
Is it enjoyable, yea.. i liked it tbh

Just some fun dumb shooty pew pew

Saints Row 1 was better.

So I just saw this was on sale for $5.99. That is the only reason I am recommending it. I definitely think you can get 6 dollars , or the equivalent, of fun out of this game. And hell, might as well pay the extra 2$ or whatever for the DLC. I stress, that is the only reason I am recommending this.
When it first released I still waited awhile to buy it on sale and when I did I was disappointed. I'm still a little disappointed after spending 47 hours on it. I had fun but I kinda made myself enjoy it. I think I paid over $20 for it so I wanted to get my moneys worth. I always try to get as much value out of a game as I can and to be honest I rarely spend more than $20 on a game. Thank you Humble Choice.
This game is somewhat of a performance mess and it was even worse when it was first released. I don't think at first they even had shader caches at the beginning but I'm not sure of that. Besides the performance issues it also was just "less" Saints Row. Thats the best way I can explain it. If you are not familiar with the series then this probably won't make sense and maybe you shouldn't buy it. But as a fan of the series this game had less of what made the other games in the series fun. For me, Saints Row was GTAs "special" cousin because it was almost a parody. Rag dolling the character around the city trying to be even more over-the-top ridiculous not caring about anything but fun.
This game appeared to try and emulate GTA too much, relying more on graphics and more reasonable physics. It didn't work for me. I felt like I was playing a more generic GTA rather than a Saints Row game. I didn't care about the less than stellar graphics of the older titles, they were fun and a slight change of pace from the other game I keep mentioning. I especially love Saints Row IV. Maybe you should buy that instead if you don't have it.
Finally, and thank you for reading the whole review, I would like to say I haven't read the other reviews. I would say though that often times the community is fairly good at letting others know issues that are occurring so I wouldn't ignore the negative reviews. Read the ones others are finding helpful and they should lead you the right way. Or just spend the $6-8 and take the chance. I would.