- Joined
- May 24, 2021
Alright. Let me start then.
I'll begin this review with a few disclaimers.
- I had acquired PS Store gift cards via work and so my own money did not support this dumpster fire
- Platform was PS5. Performance mode on everything. I prioritize frames over visuals
- everything I say here will attempt to be as unbiased as possible.
- so I don't have to type out "saints row reboot" a million times, I'll just call it SRB.
I'll start off by saying that while I did not experience any game breaking bugs as some did. However I did constantly experience issues with controls being unresponsive or "mushy" feeling with delayed inputs.
- Story and Setup
So jumping right into it, SRB's story makes no sense from the get go. Your character has a background of being Ex-military and is working for a private security company. Yet somehow, you and your combined group of loser friends cannot afford a ratty apartment in a suburb of Vegas. The main story is very, very short. We're talking completion of the main quest line within 8-9 hours of not very fast paced play. The story is, because of this, incredibly packed in and fast paced. One or two missions lead to massive expansion of the "new saints" without you really ever doing anything. In fact, very little of what you do seems to have any impact. Most of the saints expansion seems to come from the side quests. The main story really lacks any of the old saints humor, brutality, or fun. The only part of the game that ever got a chuckle out me was some of the characters in the "larp" missions. The boss battles are especially underwhelming, with you only ever really fighting one (more on that later)
The side quests are actually one of the better parts of the game. I'll expand on that.
- Gameplay and Characters
SRB's gameplay leaves....alot to be desired. The gunplay has some decent feel, but never feels fast paced or precise, more like just moving from target to target. Melee play feels mushy as well. Ammo is either never there, or in abundance. SRB's difficulty sliders are actually quite nice, however. The base settings are terrible, but by playing with these you can create some more "realistic " gameplay. I personally had mine set so that enemies were 1-2 shot kills, but also so that I died easily, spawn waves of enemies piled on, vehicles have realistic damage instead of the instant swipe-and-explode that the base game has. All enemies I dealt with suffered from the same issue: at Max heat, if you took out their main "boss" unit, such as a tank, heat would immediately dissappear and enemies would flee.
The side quests offer the closest thing to a real saints row experience, with a harder, harsher focus and more either wild or down to earth characters than the main plot line. While some side missions are story related and are unlocked via progression, most are given thru the game's system Of expansion. In SRB, the Saints are expanded by building new business ventures, in captured districts. These are placed freely on the map (which does make for some unique experiences) and the missions are given once placed. The problem is that most of these missions are a one time deal, and then replayable, when they would have been better served as a constant, random set of events or objectives. For instance, one of the business ventures is towing cars to an impound. Why are these missions one shot? Why can't I just tow any car and simply have to outrun the heat to bring it back? This same issue applies to almost all side missions.
The characters are....among the worst I've experienced in anything, ever. Among the 4-5 main characters, only Neena makes any sense. She's an auto mechanic who lost her mom. That's about it. Eli is fucking useless, a crypto nerd, who, again. If you are this smart, why are you living in this shithole apartment? And then Kevin, the *ahem* autistic-orphan-trans-pansexual-dj-cook-martial arts expert-marksman-communist. A character straight out of the depths of a tumblr fan-fic. Unsurprisingly he's a major source of the game's conflicts. And then there's a the Nuwhali.....the mastermind criminal who uses his evil to, at the end of the game.....abuse the power of friendship? Yeah. I'm lost too.
However the character that makes the least sense is your own. As I said before, your character comes from a military background, and is working for a high tech private army. He can not only drive/pilot anything, but he's also some sort of badass who can pull off all sorts of attack moves, expert marksmanship, and other shit. And again hes....living in this dumpy apartment with these losers? And then on multiple occasions, after chewing his way thru hundreds of grunts, he stops and has ANOTHER CHARACTER kill a main boss for him. Also he's capable of all of this but then randomly let's his guard down, leading to the end game events. Nothing about your character makes sense. The game's most interesting and relatable characters are often, again, from the sidequests. Such as crystal, a smuggler looking to get out of the trade, or the handy mechanic character, RJ, who just wants his shop.
- World, Economy and Content.
These parts of the game are what lead me to the conclusion that 2 different groups of devs, from different eras/schools of thought worked on this game. Because the open world and it's contents are.....surprisingly good. There's a wealth of things to find and do. Some of those things, such as the historical markers, or scrap metal cars, are objectives that you must find and check off. Others are simply unmarked shops or special vehicles hidden throughout the game, such as a racing bathtub or hidden stock car.
The world actually feels somewhat living. It's not as good as stillwater, but it's better than steelport. While the main part of the map is influenced by Vegas, the downtown region seems to be a mix of NY and Chicago. The outer areas are the first real rural areas in a saints game, with about half the map being open highways, desert and mountains. The city feels fairly dense and packed, while cruising the open road also feels nice. The soundtrack actually is somewhat good, with a metal station from nuclear blast, a mediocre synthwave station, a decent BPM station, etc. Peds are active and varied, with different behavior at different times of day. Random events such as car crashes, crimes you can steal from etc are all over. Weather varies between sunny, Cloudy and sandstorm. Traffic is varied, and like previous saints games, will use the game's customization options, but more than in previous games. This leads to ALOT of variance which creates a more "real" feeling world. Many parts of the game seem to be self aware, with peds saying things like "who's playing this game anyway?" or "what's this game even about?" However, this world lacks the depth of SR1/2, with little to no interior buildings, etc
There's not much to say about the economy besides the fact that it's essentially useless. By the time you're making decent money, the campaign is basically over. You go from making no cash to infinite money basically within the span of 2-3 missions. There's no real sense of progression or anything of that sort.
SRB offers quite a bit of customization, for pretty much every part of the game. Even things like tanks and ambulances can be customized. Guns have tons of skins. There's quite a lot of options for your character. Vehicle customization is probably the most impressive, with pretty much everything having a large wealth of options. Gang customization makes a return, but is useless, since you never seem to see your gang anywhere, even in claimed territories. The in game garage has a very limited amount of space, which I thought was an odd choice given the amount of stuff there is. It's also very clear from many of the customization options that at some point the "larp" missions were supposed to be something more akin to mad max/wasteland weekend, since while the larp armor/cars/guns are tape and cardboard, these mods are steel, diamond plate, sheetmetal, etc.
DLC support is the saddest I've ever seen for an AAA game.
- Conclusion
At the end of all of this, SRB is an incredibly bad story and cast of characters, played with within an exceptionally dated and lazy build, but set within a surprisingly good open world. However the shortcomings, failings, and downright idiotic failings of this game not only as a saints game, but as a game in general, are simply unforgivable. I could write ten more paragraphs of grievances with this game, although I've tried to sum them up as best I can.
What I do think is that i feel bad for the devs who actually cared about this game, because from the design of the open world, the customization, some of the details etc it's very clear that they cared, or at least tried to care. My guess is that these were older volition devs who cared about the series.
SRB's biggest issue is that its trying to be a saintsrow game, while being nothing like one. Had this simply been a new IP, it wouldn't be SO bad. But trying to be SR? It simply isn't, and never will be.
4/10 for me
I'll begin this review with a few disclaimers.
- I had acquired PS Store gift cards via work and so my own money did not support this dumpster fire
- Platform was PS5. Performance mode on everything. I prioritize frames over visuals
- everything I say here will attempt to be as unbiased as possible.
- so I don't have to type out "saints row reboot" a million times, I'll just call it SRB.
I'll start off by saying that while I did not experience any game breaking bugs as some did. However I did constantly experience issues with controls being unresponsive or "mushy" feeling with delayed inputs.
- Story and Setup
So jumping right into it, SRB's story makes no sense from the get go. Your character has a background of being Ex-military and is working for a private security company. Yet somehow, you and your combined group of loser friends cannot afford a ratty apartment in a suburb of Vegas. The main story is very, very short. We're talking completion of the main quest line within 8-9 hours of not very fast paced play. The story is, because of this, incredibly packed in and fast paced. One or two missions lead to massive expansion of the "new saints" without you really ever doing anything. In fact, very little of what you do seems to have any impact. Most of the saints expansion seems to come from the side quests. The main story really lacks any of the old saints humor, brutality, or fun. The only part of the game that ever got a chuckle out me was some of the characters in the "larp" missions. The boss battles are especially underwhelming, with you only ever really fighting one (more on that later)
The side quests are actually one of the better parts of the game. I'll expand on that.
- Gameplay and Characters
SRB's gameplay leaves....alot to be desired. The gunplay has some decent feel, but never feels fast paced or precise, more like just moving from target to target. Melee play feels mushy as well. Ammo is either never there, or in abundance. SRB's difficulty sliders are actually quite nice, however. The base settings are terrible, but by playing with these you can create some more "realistic " gameplay. I personally had mine set so that enemies were 1-2 shot kills, but also so that I died easily, spawn waves of enemies piled on, vehicles have realistic damage instead of the instant swipe-and-explode that the base game has. All enemies I dealt with suffered from the same issue: at Max heat, if you took out their main "boss" unit, such as a tank, heat would immediately dissappear and enemies would flee.
The side quests offer the closest thing to a real saints row experience, with a harder, harsher focus and more either wild or down to earth characters than the main plot line. While some side missions are story related and are unlocked via progression, most are given thru the game's system Of expansion. In SRB, the Saints are expanded by building new business ventures, in captured districts. These are placed freely on the map (which does make for some unique experiences) and the missions are given once placed. The problem is that most of these missions are a one time deal, and then replayable, when they would have been better served as a constant, random set of events or objectives. For instance, one of the business ventures is towing cars to an impound. Why are these missions one shot? Why can't I just tow any car and simply have to outrun the heat to bring it back? This same issue applies to almost all side missions.
The characters are....among the worst I've experienced in anything, ever. Among the 4-5 main characters, only Neena makes any sense. She's an auto mechanic who lost her mom. That's about it. Eli is fucking useless, a crypto nerd, who, again. If you are this smart, why are you living in this shithole apartment? And then Kevin, the *ahem* autistic-orphan-trans-pansexual-dj-cook-martial arts expert-marksman-communist. A character straight out of the depths of a tumblr fan-fic. Unsurprisingly he's a major source of the game's conflicts. And then there's a the Nuwhali.....the mastermind criminal who uses his evil to, at the end of the game.....abuse the power of friendship? Yeah. I'm lost too.
However the character that makes the least sense is your own. As I said before, your character comes from a military background, and is working for a high tech private army. He can not only drive/pilot anything, but he's also some sort of badass who can pull off all sorts of attack moves, expert marksmanship, and other shit. And again hes....living in this dumpy apartment with these losers? And then on multiple occasions, after chewing his way thru hundreds of grunts, he stops and has ANOTHER CHARACTER kill a main boss for him. Also he's capable of all of this but then randomly let's his guard down, leading to the end game events. Nothing about your character makes sense. The game's most interesting and relatable characters are often, again, from the sidequests. Such as crystal, a smuggler looking to get out of the trade, or the handy mechanic character, RJ, who just wants his shop.
- World, Economy and Content.
These parts of the game are what lead me to the conclusion that 2 different groups of devs, from different eras/schools of thought worked on this game. Because the open world and it's contents are.....surprisingly good. There's a wealth of things to find and do. Some of those things, such as the historical markers, or scrap metal cars, are objectives that you must find and check off. Others are simply unmarked shops or special vehicles hidden throughout the game, such as a racing bathtub or hidden stock car.
The world actually feels somewhat living. It's not as good as stillwater, but it's better than steelport. While the main part of the map is influenced by Vegas, the downtown region seems to be a mix of NY and Chicago. The outer areas are the first real rural areas in a saints game, with about half the map being open highways, desert and mountains. The city feels fairly dense and packed, while cruising the open road also feels nice. The soundtrack actually is somewhat good, with a metal station from nuclear blast, a mediocre synthwave station, a decent BPM station, etc. Peds are active and varied, with different behavior at different times of day. Random events such as car crashes, crimes you can steal from etc are all over. Weather varies between sunny, Cloudy and sandstorm. Traffic is varied, and like previous saints games, will use the game's customization options, but more than in previous games. This leads to ALOT of variance which creates a more "real" feeling world. Many parts of the game seem to be self aware, with peds saying things like "who's playing this game anyway?" or "what's this game even about?" However, this world lacks the depth of SR1/2, with little to no interior buildings, etc
There's not much to say about the economy besides the fact that it's essentially useless. By the time you're making decent money, the campaign is basically over. You go from making no cash to infinite money basically within the span of 2-3 missions. There's no real sense of progression or anything of that sort.
SRB offers quite a bit of customization, for pretty much every part of the game. Even things like tanks and ambulances can be customized. Guns have tons of skins. There's quite a lot of options for your character. Vehicle customization is probably the most impressive, with pretty much everything having a large wealth of options. Gang customization makes a return, but is useless, since you never seem to see your gang anywhere, even in claimed territories. The in game garage has a very limited amount of space, which I thought was an odd choice given the amount of stuff there is. It's also very clear from many of the customization options that at some point the "larp" missions were supposed to be something more akin to mad max/wasteland weekend, since while the larp armor/cars/guns are tape and cardboard, these mods are steel, diamond plate, sheetmetal, etc.
DLC support is the saddest I've ever seen for an AAA game.
- Conclusion
At the end of all of this, SRB is an incredibly bad story and cast of characters, played with within an exceptionally dated and lazy build, but set within a surprisingly good open world. However the shortcomings, failings, and downright idiotic failings of this game not only as a saints game, but as a game in general, are simply unforgivable. I could write ten more paragraphs of grievances with this game, although I've tried to sum them up as best I can.
What I do think is that i feel bad for the devs who actually cared about this game, because from the design of the open world, the customization, some of the details etc it's very clear that they cared, or at least tried to care. My guess is that these were older volition devs who cared about the series.
SRB's biggest issue is that its trying to be a saintsrow game, while being nothing like one. Had this simply been a new IP, it wouldn't be SO bad. But trying to be SR? It simply isn't, and never will be.
4/10 for me
