I've never played a Saints Row game before. All I knew of the franchise was that it was supposed to be outrageous and over-the-top. And I can respect that, considering that it's an open-world crime game franchise that tries to separate itself from THE open-world crime game franchise: Grand Theft Auto. But maybe Volition should've held onto that ridiculousness because going "realistic" for the reboot this time around did NOT work out for them.
Way, Way Too Dated
I'm not going to mince my words. For a game that came out in 2022, Saints Row feels like it should've come out on the Xbox 360 or PS3. And this applies to both the game's visuals and gameplay loop.
The visuals are not half bad. There are times when the game's vistas would look amazing, but these moments were few and far between. I reviewed a LOT of open-world games that had the vistas and the beauty of the overall landscape as one of their main selling points. But even if I had Saints Row's graphics cranked up to the absolute max (which were unusually heavy on hardware, by the way), it looked... meh. Not even "okay," it's just "meh." And that's saying something - I've played a lot of PS3 and Xbox 360-era games that look better than this. And they're not supposed to make my PC hardware sweat.
On the subject of the gameplay, again, it feels like it belongs to an open-world game released in 2008. Now, I might just be way too spoiled by modern games and their elements like cover snapping and more fluid animations, but seriously, the gameplay loop is so dated that it's not even "old" to me anymore. I like things that are "old." I don't like this at all. The open world is barely interactable. You can't enter a lot of buildings. And even if you are able to, these are just set dressing. There's absolutely nothing interesting in them. GTA San Andreas' Los Santos feels more alive than this open world. And that's a game from freaking 2004.
As for the open-world activities in Saints Row, their use never goes beyond giving you money. That's it. They are just meaningless filler that doesn't add to the story or give interesting diversions to the main narrative - which, to be honest, is also not too revolutionary. And with the main story as bland (and most of the time, cringy) as this, you're going to want to find some interesting diversions in the world. You won't get it. There's no incentive to explore in this game.
Remember the saying about open-world games being "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle?" This applies to Saints Row. And much more. And I freaking played Ubisoft's recent open-world games, which so many critics slam for having way too much filler. Honestly, Saints Row makes games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla feel like a masterpiece by comparison. At least there, the side diversions can be far more interesting than what's in this... thing.
Things Aren't Too Broken, But Still Don't Work Right
I played a day one version of Saints Row, and I gotta say: while it's nowhere near as buggy as games like Assassin's Creed Unity or Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, it can still be quite problematic at times. I don't know if the issues I'm going to detail in this review are already fixed, but honestly, I've already uninstalled the game, and I'm not inclined to check.
First off, we start with some nitpicks. FXAA implementation is all out of whack. The game just looks bad with this AA option, and I often go for this because I'm not too interested in anything else. On PC, AA settings can be extremely demanding on hardware, so I always go for the basic setting whenever I can. FXAA fits the bill, but definitely not in this game.
Next up is the frame rate. I have a 165Hz monitor, and I want to squeeze that refresh rate as much as I want to. But for some reason, Saints Row just wants to cap my frame rate at 65 FPS even if I clearly have the "Uncapped" option ticked. This is something so basic, it's not even funny.
Moving on, AUTOSAVES. Saints Row, as far as I remember, has the absolute WORST checkpointing system I've ever experienced. Ever. Nothing comes close. It barely saves up a lot of major progress at all, and not even doing a manual save helps. I remember multiple times when I swear I could've reached a freaking checkpoint, but it wasn't a checkpoint at all. And when I load up the game after fully shutting it down, I had to freaking start a lot of missions over. WHAT. THE. HECK. Who even thought this was a good idea? I kept on losing around 30 minutes of progress on average because of the horrendous checkpoint saves.
Gameplay Hiccups
Look, I know that the game developers at Deep Silver Volition wanted to make the game as fun as it can be. I applaud their efforts. But the way they executed it was so piss-poor. Perhaps even "piss-poor" is too nice of a word to describe Saints Row's gameplay hiccups because they really just take away the fun out of everything.
For instance, why in the world would you, as a designer, basically force a player to play through a MAIN MISSION completely unarmed, where they have to fight a bunch of fully armed enemies using your hand-to-hand combat system that is an absolute piece of crap? SERIOUSLY. I had several missions where I explicitly remember equipping a gun, then I went to the mission area and all I could get from the weapon wheel were my freaking fists. I don't know if this is a bug or if it is even intended, but WHAT THE HECK even happened here?
On the subject of hand-to-hand combat, again, it was so problematic because of the input lag between my button press and the animations playing out. I took way too many clicks just to send out one punch. This is not how it's supposed to be; it never was. I'm playing on a mouse and keyboard too, so input lag should basically be absent.
Oh, you know what, I just figured out why the hand-to-hand combat is so wonky. IT IS ANIMATION-BASED. This means basically having no control over your character moves. You click, and a drawn-out animation plays, which takes you away from the entire experience as a whole.
And lastly, what is with this game's physics? I know Saints Row is supposed to be a "ridiculous" game, given the franchise's pedigree. But a freaking SUV should not be flying 50 feet into the air whenever a bulldozer flips it up. What gravity does this world have? Moon-level gravity?
Honestly, the only kind of fun you could get from this kind of game is just the chaos-causing part of it. Blowing up cars, people, and buildings can be a blast - as it has always been. But do it for 10-15 hours or more, and it gets boring. Absolutely, horrendously boring. Perhaps a 10-year-old will have fun with this kind of "blowing things up" gameplay loop. Though since this is a crime-heavy game, I wouldn't even let a kid that age come within 50 feet of this darn game.
A Very 'Meh' Narrative
My first impression of the narrative is that it's way too fast-paced and barely gives you any breaks. But perhaps that's to be expected for a franchise with this kind of over-the-top pedigree. Also, consider the fact that I've never played a Saints Row game before, so perhaps this could be part of the franchise's DNA that has been around for a while, and I just didn't know about it. But if Deep Silver Volition wanted to pull in new fans into the Saints Row franchise with this, then they're probably going to be better off checking out the old games instead of this one.
Voice acting is top-notch, though. All characters sound amazing, especially if you go for the British lady voice for your boss - that continuous rapid-fire of very Bri'ish curse words at the beginning of the game was pretty funny. But seriously, what is with the pacing of this story? The dialogue, while the voice acting is superb, seems like it's being so, so rushed. People aren't supposed to talk like they're always trying to catch a train. And it's not just rushed - the word choice will just make you want to roll your eyes most of the time.
To cap things off, the characters are very, very forgettable, it's not even funny. Even the villains whom I know were supposed to be cartoonish never even registered with me.
Conclusion
Saints Row 2022 is a bad game. It's the "oldest-feeling" current-gen game I've ever played, featuring an open-world design so lifeless it seems like the last several years of advancing open-world design never mattered. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, even if it did start off cheap. Perhaps not even a low entry price could make this game worth playing. While there are some fun elements, they overstay their welcome, and the gameplay variety is way too limited.
