If you were debating on picking up the new Saints Row game when it comes out on August 23, 2022 you should probably not get it. Just don't buy it. In fact, I'd probably wait maybe a year or so before picking it up. Not only will the game more than likely be out on Steam at that point for you PC users, but it will probably also be a lot less buggy. It will probably also be available for a big discount.
The newest entry in a franchise I very much enjoy playing has been getting some decided less-than-stellar reviews. According to OpenCritic, Saints Row's reviews are sitting at an average of 66% with only 47% of all critics recommending the game. On Metacritic, the Xbox Series X|S version pulled in a 66% average while the PlayStation 5 version sits at 63%. That 63% score makes it the worst reviewed Saints Row game ever released. It's placed below the largely disappointing Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell. In fact, the only Saints Row content this new release scored better than are two pieces of DLC: Ultor Exposed for Saints Row 2 and Genki Bowl VII for Saints Row: The Third.
The biggest issue with Saints Row, according to reviews, is that it's just broken in several different ways. The glitches are just the icing on the cake that also includes complaints about a lackluster story, braindead AI, and outdated gameplay design. The added months of development time following its delay from February 2022 until August 2022 just doesn't seem like it was enough time. VGC called the new game "painfully generic." The Ars Technica review flatly said that the game was "beyond redemption" and that Saints Row "is the rare open-world game that makes an average Ubisoft open-world game of the past five years seem refreshing by comparison."
VGC's review also touched upon an issue that I've seen mentioned in nearly every other review: Bugs and glitches.
"Even the stuff that sounds great on paper, like the permanent wing suit that allows you to bounce off pedestrians’ heads to gain altitude, doesn’t work quite right. … There are large sections of Saints Row that could be written off as generic, inoffensive open-world fluff, if not for the parade of bugs that greeted us throughout our time with the game. From the world not loading in correctly, leaving us dangling in the shadow realm, to characters T-posing, to the sniper rifle scope being permanently plastered to the screen, it’s an incredibly unstable game."
Dan Ryckert of GiantBomb.com could not even finish review due to a severe game-breaking bug.
Ryckert continues on to say that the bug was not included in the list of known issues that would be addressed in the day one patch for the game. He also reached out "several times" to Volition to inquire about this bug but did not get any response that would indicate the bug has been addressed.
The issues don't just end there though. Several reviews have gone in-depth on the bugs that they have encountered while playing. Cars disappearing from the roads, your own car disappearing while driving, random disconnects in co-op leading to failed missions, the camera spinning wildly, fire hydrants shooting your car up into the air, vehicles that you need to destroy for missions being indestructible, whatever this is, randomly dying on missions, missions not completing, placeholder text, bad NPC pathing, T-posing NPCs appearing, cars disappearing leaving static pedestrians in the road, driverless cars, misaligned animations, bad lip syncing, cars disappearing entirely during the insurance fraud missions, cars jammed at intersections, pedestrians being totally absent for long stretches of time in cities, and the list just goes on. You can see a lot of them in the video embedded below (specifically starting at 21:25 or jus throughout the whole thing), or you can just browse around social media to see plenty more.
Some reviewers have taken to comparing this game to Cyberpunk 2077's launch but conceded that even in that rough launch state, Cyberpunk 2077 had a much larger scope, better story, and was more ambitious than this Saints Row reboot is. I have even seen one person refer to this game as a "Netflix adaptation of the Saints Row franchise."
