The original Saints Row had just enough grit and edginess when GTA was over-the-top and campy. Then GTA 4 came out and it was dark, grim and humorless, with a washed-out color palette and no likeable characters. Saints Row 2 was released a few months later, and it was a breath of fresh air. It felt like a video game instead of a cheap knockoff of the Sopranos, and it had a lot of zany, outlandish elements while still retaining a good core story.
Then Deep Silver bought Volition and almost all of the original devs left the company. The SR franchise has been dogshit ever since.
It certainly did, with all the absurd padding that only a video game could muster. For all GTA's faults, it actually let me play the story instead of having to stop every mission to go grind more respect at a side activity I didn't want to play (usually). If Roman wanted to go bowling in SR2, you would actually have to do so every single time to maintain a proper amount of respect points.
I understand why people like 2, it has some of the best elements of the series. But it was still considerably flawed.
The original Saints Row had just enough grit and edginess when GTA was over-the-top and campy. Then GTA 4 came out and it was dark, grim and humorless, with a washed-out color palette and no likeable characters. Saints Row 2 was released a few months later, and it was a breath of fresh air. It felt like a video game instead of a cheap knockoff of the Sopranos, and it had a lot of zany, outlandish elements while still retaining a good core story.
Then Deep Silver bought Volition and almost all of the original devs left the company. The SR franchise has been dogshit ever since.
It certainly did, with all the absurd padding that only a video game could muster. For all GTA's faults, it actually let me play the story instead of having to stop every mission to go grind more respect at a side activity I didn't want to play (usually). If Roman wanted to go bowling in SR2, you would actually have to do so every single time to maintain a proper amount of respect points.
I understand why people like 2, it has some of the best elements of the series. But it was still considerably flawed.