Saints Row Reviews
The biggest issue with the new “Saints Row” isn’t the lack of humor or well written characters, but consistency and a coherent narrative. In some ways, the franchise is too afraid of its past and still struggles to find its footing and look to the future.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Imagine a huge bustling world yours for the taking. Beautiful sandy deserts, towering skyscrapers, endless enemies to kill. Now imagine doing the same things you’ve done in other video games countless times in this beautiful world. That’s Saints Row.
While I miss the edge of the original Saints Row games, this reboot stays true enough to the tone and, if nothing else, is a fun game worth the $60 price tag. My biggest gripes with it come from comparing it to the hype of its own series, but if it wasn’t called Saints Row I probably wouldn’t have any problems with it.
It needs to be said how Saints Row titles have always been a fun and extravagant romps. This reboot is pretty much just more of the same, but with additional safety nets. The revamped humour is appreciated, and the current-generation take on what is a decade-old franchise is most certainly enjoyable, to say the least. It is just a shame how boring and, ultimately, forgetful, the overall experience is – leaving players with no real desire to return to the world. Characters are masterfully designed, and the open world is truly a marvel; but a boring slog of a campaign, literal game-breaking bugs, and an over-reliance on a faction system that ties into the campaign, is just not desirable. The game is good, but oh-so-forgettable.
Perhaps the excessive conservatism of Volition has caused a golden opportunity to revitalize the saga with a more forceful update to have been lost. Saints Row is a return to formulas that seemed somewhat outdated for the construction of open world games, but what cannot be denied is that, despite this, they have managed to put together a title that is hilarious at the controls, especially in some main missions that have a prodigious treatment of unbridled action sequences.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A must have for all the Saints Row franchise fans but maybe a little bit old-fashioned for the rest. It seems to be targeted for the previous console generation and its technical muscle is not at the expected level. Anyway you will enjoy a lot with the game if you do not expect too much from it.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I did enjoy what I got to see of the characters that make up your new Saints crew, for as ridiculously all over the place as their personalities are. At the start of Saints Row, you’re already an established group of friends that had no business being as tight as they are, with the protagonist initially being cog in a paramilitary group’s machine and the rest individual members of each of the ruling gangs in town, all unhappy with how things are run and wanting to make something for themselves. It’s a silly setup and a tinsy bit more grounded and held back than usual Saints Row, but the idea of putting together a new crew would’ve made for an otherwise tremendous game. Sadly, Saints Row is a halfway reinvention at best, one that both fans and newcomers to the franchise are likely to be bored with due to how repetitive and by-the-numbers it turns out to be.
What the Saints Row reboot truly reminds us is that — whatever situation they may find themselves in — the Saints do it for each other. 2022’s Saints Row is less about reeling it in and more about coming home. And in the house that Santo Ileso’s Saints built, “damn, it feels good to be a gangster.”
The new Saints Row game is simply Saints Row with everything positive and negative that comes with that. The only question is whether that will be enough for people that aren't already fans of the series.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
With minor swabs the Saints Row reboot maintains the madness of the series, delivering entertaining, effectfull action and humorous cutscenes and dialogue with a myriad pop cultural references. It is still not on eye level with GTA, but especially concerning customization of characters, cars or weapons, Saints Row sets a new standard for the genre.
Review in German | Read full review
The reboot of Volition's once-popular series tries to adapt to our times but fails to have, at its core, anything different or of its own to say.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
If you've jumped at breakneck speed to this point to decide whether or not to buy Saints Row on the basis of the little number on the side, know that you've made a huge mistake. Volition's new production is a good restart for the series, both in terms of narrative and in terms of rethinking the gameplay. Saints Row's real flaws are all to be found in an endless series of bugs due to a failure to clean up the final code.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Saints Row is a "fun" game, but that's the only way I can describe it. Will you get pleasure from your experience with it? surely. But if you expect to get a distinct and different open world title that goes back to the strong foundation of the series, you won't find that here, especially with huge amount of technical problems, forgettable characters, and missions. Despite this, Volition is still on the right track with the series, and they will surely learn from this game's mistakes while working on the next one, so let's hope it doesn't disappoint...
Review in Arabic | Read full review
The Saints have come marching in once again and while Santo Ileso offers a fun playground for these reborn renegades, it’s somewhat marred by a wealth of graphical issues, some underwhelming gunplay and a predictable narrative. Having said all that, you can customise your character into an orange, hurl yourself into traffic to make money and throw a self-propelled football at enemies to send them into space. It’s Saints Row as you remember, for better or worse, with a new coat of paint and refurbished for modern times.
So what does all this mean for the Saints Row score. Well the game isn’t perfect, there are the odd little nuance of the game, but boy oh boy is everything just fun about the game. It doesn’t take itself seriously, which is easy to do when previous iterations of the franchise have allowed you to fight using a large purple dildo.
Compared to Saints Row IV and Saints Row The Third, this reboot feels more like a glorified retread than an evolution. But to people new to the sandbox crime game genre and who just want a lot of punchy fun & surprises out of their crime games for 25+ hours? It's a decent introduction and a case study on how to make the genre seem fun again, as well as keep the series grounded to its Grand Theft Auto-inspired roots.
Saints Row wants to return to the old open-world days, but forgets to take along current practices such as mission design or visuals. Entertaining, silly and charming, it is able to fill a little-occupied field in the genre. But it is not a real reboot. It's more of a scaling back of the craziness and a rehashing of old virtues. But anyone who can appreciate this will have fun in Santo Ileso for a long time.
Review in German | Read full review
Saints Row is an incredibly fun game. The bugs often get in the way but underneath there’s an enjoyable sandbox experience here where you can truly be your own boss.
I enjoyed the story but I stayed for the characters, Hands down one of the best groups of people in a Saints Row game in a long time.
Saints Row is much better than its terrible reveal trailer made it look like, with some great controls, a ton of side content, a ludicrous character creator, and some truly amazing story missions, but its tone suffers from a proper lack of direction. At times, it resembles the ultra-imbecilic Saints Row we all know and love. Other times, it tries desperately to pander to a dab-appreciating, hashtag-tolerant, Twitter-addicted, Buzzfeed-consuming Gen Z generation that would never consider buying a game in this franchise to begin with. It’s a game that feels like it was written by two completely antagonistic committees. If you can ignore its tonal discrepancies, as well as some glitches, you’ll have a great time with yet another strong outing from Volition.