TL;DR Ignore all the negativity. If you have ever enjoyed a Saints Row game you know exactly what to expect and will have a blast with this one, especially if you can snag it for $5 on sale.
I honestly don't understand all the negativity towards this game. The reception kept me away from this game until a couple days ago when I got it on sale. As a big Saints Row fan I should not have listened to the moans and groans. This is the Saints Row game I have been waiting for since 2008. I feel like most of the hate this title received probably comes from an audience of people who have little to no experience with the series.
Full transparency, this is coming from someone whose favorite game is Saints Row 2 which I have revisited and beaten countless times. Saint's row exists as a foil to the open world games which take themselves a little too seriously, mainly GTA, and has always been an outlet for silly gang violence and the stories that surround it. This really started with SR2 as the original game played it's cards much closer to their chest, a la "GTA but with gangs". SR 2 came out at the perfect time, alongside GTA IV which was notoriously serious, probably the most out of the GTA games. The advertising was literally side by side comparisons of GTA IV and SR 2, showing the over-the-top antics you'll get up to compared to the largely mundane setting of GTA IV (no matter how good the story telling).
I mention this as Saints Row, at least after SR2, was never meant to be more than silly arcade gang violence. My biggest complaint with the series as it progressed through SR3, Gat out of Hell, and SR4, is that it went a little too far in the direction of "outlandish". By SR4 it was less about gangs fighting one another and fell more along the lines of Sci-Fi/Superhero roleplay. The combat and overall gameplay still felt enough like Saints Row to keep me engaged long enough to beat each of those titles and even revisit them for additional playthroughs, but something was missing - that balance SR2 struck between reality and silliness was gone. The series had leaned much too hard into silly territory.
We don't talk about Agents of Mayhem. I appreciate the thematic choices fitting where they had taken their gameplay, but the game was bland and every mission felt literally exactly the same. All 52 of them. I am coming directly from playing that game, and this new Saints Row is MILES better than AoM.
Saints Row 2023 feels like a call back to their primetime - Saints Row 2. The story is even similar to it where you are starting the gang from scratch and have to help put together a headquarters which you slowly upgrade throughout the coarse of the game. The over the top silliness from SR3 and SR4 is dialed back significantly, and I feel like they were able to strike that perfect balance like they did with SR2.
SR 2023 takes everything done well in SR2 and expands upon it. The missions are varied and over the top, but fall within the realm of realistic within the universe. Every mission you complete unlocks some sort of upgrade or new feature for you to mess around with - the types of things other games would make you pay microtransactions for. The combat...well it's Saints Row combat. What do you expect? Enemies are spongey, have weird reactions when hit with bullets, and you probably fight a little too many of them in each mission. But that's Saints Row for you! It's arcady. It's meant to be. This is why I keep coming back to this series. It's nothing too complex but its FUN.
The open world has been handled well imo. There's not a terribly large amount of things to discover, but there are activities for you to do in each section of the map which only grow in number as you progress through the story. Some open world games I play for exploration and discovery, some open world games I play to have fun checking off boxes on a list. This (and all saints row games) fall into the latter category. They also added criminal "ventures" which are basically side stories connected to some new development in your criminal enterprise. This feels pretty much like a ripoff of the similar concept in GTA Online, but hey, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. These business ventures add a nice distraction from the main story, which you also unlock some pretty fun things from.
I am not terribly far into this game, but I am in awe at the amount of fun I am having with it when compared to the general sentiment this game has received. When I built my new PC I redownloaded GTA V to test out my new rig. I now am playing Saints Row 2023 about a month or two later. I am having way more fun with this game that I did with GTA V. Take it with a grain of salt, but I am generally shocked that this game got roasted as much as it did.
It's a shame, because this will probably be the last Saints Row game we see due to the public reception.
