Saints Row Review

If gamers believe that this version of Saints Row will be like its predecessors, then they’re sadly mistaken. Saints Row this time around has a whole new location and focuses much more on its RPG elements.

While previous titles of the series showcase the Third Street Saints already established and thriving, in Saints Row the story heavily focuses on the early construction stages of the crime organization. The story itself revolves around the bond between best friends and roommates Neenah, Eli, Kevin, and of course The Boss just wanting more to life than being henchmen.

The writing certainly has this modern-day energy about it. While some moments can be funny and yes, at times even considered cringe, there are moments that are serious and even upsetting. It’s the balance between the two that makes progressing the game fun.

Past Saints Row fans will not be disappointed with the number of customization options that are now made available. Creativity almost seems endless now. If you don’t believe me just check out the Create A Boss Community Hub. In this hub, players can see all kinds of downloaded custom-created bosses. You can see bosses based on various video games, TV Shows, movies, and even anime. Weapons and cars also get customization rework. Compared to last games you can do so much more for their appearances. You can truly be your own boss and that’s not an exaggeration.

Santo Ileso is a vast open world and Saints Row wants players to experience and explore it. Throughout the game, there will be collectibles, criminal ventures, and side missions to complete scattered around the map. Some of these activities won’t appear until they are actually discovered encouraging players to traverse the map. While I initially thought the process would be annoying or tedious, driving around Santo Ileso was actually a great experience as the environment itself was visually appealing.

There are a variety of weapons and cars to collect in the new Saints Row. Each one can come with its own unique and special tool to add to your arsenal. Skills make a return but with a different spin on things. Every gun and vehicle you use has a challenge. Once the challenge is completed the gun or car can be leveled up to unlock a special skill. In terms of your character, depending on your progress a new character perk can be unlocked with the completed challenges. Each time the player levels up a new character skill becomes active. They can be passive like a health upgrade or dropping a grenade down an enemy’s pants and throwing them.

There’s explosion and absolute mayhem almost around every corner no matter what you’re doing. Main Mission, activities, or even just driving destruction will be left in your wake.

While I visually love how Saints Row looks and like its RPG focus there is one major problem the game possesses: the bugs. There will be moments that NPCs and enemies will be T-posing. AI would be unresponsive to certain actions and cutscene outfits wouldn’t load incorrectly. The worst thing I’ve encountered when playing this game was some missions would soft lock and couldn’t be completed. This would cause me to reload the game and start my progress all over.

In Co-op, whether it be there would be times, my partner would disconnect mid-mission even with a stable connection. Within the games, partner prank is a feature that exists. The player is given a task and upon completion, the partner would begin to act or look strange. It’s supposed to be funny but it just ends up making the game more aggravating to play as it clashes with real anomalies in the game.

Conclusion

Saints Row is a new take on the franchise, one that focuses heavily on the RPG aspect of the game. It’s a fun underdog story set in the beautiful Saint Elos about this new version of the Saints. The customization options to make your boss truly your own delivers in such a remarkable fashion. However, it is the number of glitches and bugs that hurt the game’s reputation.