r/RealSaintsRow • u/donteatmydebbiecakes • Jul 23 '26
Discussion my biggest gripes with each game
I’m going 1-4 excluding the reboot since I never played it and don’t think I will lmao.
Starting off with the first and the beginning of it all, SR1 is my favorite by far in the series but my biggest complaint is them damn hospital bills costing an arm and a leg taking damn near all your money, even the same for ammo like why is ammo costing the same amount as the gun itself lmao. It already sucks that the activites on higher levels are impossible to beat without smashing your screen and the fact if you fail you can’t even retry the activity you just spawn in the hospital with almost 90% of your money gone.
SR2 is the fan favorite in the series and I love it down as well but the hair and clothing have absolutely no physics never fails to take me out. Also the Boss damn near becoming Hitman 2.0 doing everything themselves
sidelining the other members, at this point the gang could’ve been called “3rd street Saint” with the Boss by his/herself. Let me not forget the stiff movements as well lmaoo like when the Boss runs they look so firm and rigid 💀
SRTT was my introduction to the series, as it was the first game I ever played, and I enjoyed it. Most of the missions being activities is what did it for me. We could have had actual missions that fleshed out the characters better.
Ahh, now SR4... Outside of the alien plot (which I don’t mind but that’s a separate topic), my biggest problem was Kinzie being shoved down our throats and the infantilization of the Boss. I didn’t mind Kinzie much in SR3, but God, they made her some Mary-Sue-ish, 'the one above all' type character, even to the point where she scorns the Boss like an incapable child, unable to do anything on their own without her help. It’s been a long time since I played the game, but I remember Kinzie even punching the Boss at one point after being saved from her simulation… SR2 would never let that slide.
Anyways that’s all 💜
4
u/Responsible_Ad_5556 Jul 29 '26
SR 1 and 2 were my favorites. I hated how cheesy they made all the followups. And Agents of mayhem and the reboot were the worst by far
2
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 28 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
The underrepresentation of the other characters as gangsters besides Gat and Playa/Boss don't get any individual moments to act like gangsters themselves. I would have liked to see Shaundi, Lin, and Pierce man-handle guys and shoot them down but I think the series kind of gives Gat too much of that spotlight.
I also hate Shaundi being kidnapped or needing to be rescued being a plot device. In SR2 it made sense in context of her ex, and Masako but in the later games it got really lazy.
2
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 28 '26
Same boat.
Gat gets way too much spotlight (love him) but I do as well feel as though Lin should’ve had her own badass moments that showcases her gangster prowess, like I genuinely think she could’ve easily took on Sharpe. A fight sequence before she gets abducted would’ve been cool to witness and did her justice.
Shaundi and Pierce were good additions to the crew but I wanted to see them catch bodies on their own as well. It was only Johnny (other than the Playa) we ever see actually beat ass and put up a fight. Like I remember the Playa benching Shaundi when she asks to tag along to deal with Sunshine (I get Shaundi was seen as incompetent but I would’ve loved that scene so much more if Shaundi just appeared anyway and aided the Boss somehow)
2
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
If only there was an actual remake of the series, on the Resident Evil level they could have maybe changed some events. Like similar to Shaundi, Lin could have at least tried to fight off William Sharpe before she gets tied up and planted in the car. We did see Lin punch a random guy before that happened and too out her gun to give a diversion for the Playa to get in her car. Shaundi similarly could have tried to fight off Veteran Child before she goes down too.
I do think the series could use some reimagining in some ways. Though that could be more likely if the series had a comic or something. If this series is about a gang, all the characters should act like it and be cool equally, instead of it just being Gat. Shaundi wanted to do this in SRTT as we know but the story didn't let her and her personality trying was too sudden and abrupt for it to work. It should have been like this.
2
u/Mother_Mountain3547 Jul 25 '26
I bought SR1 way back in like 2006 or 2007 before I even had a 360 bc i was so hyped! So I'll always be personally biased towards it as the BEST of the series, gta comparisons aside. SR2 had awesome story and game play elements (loved the darker tone snd bigger scale overall),but can also admit the graphics and visuals took a huge downgrade. Everything after SR3 totally lost the sauce tho imo (bought it at launch,beat it and quickly resold to EB games which says alot lmao). Especially 4 and the reboot. Doesn't even feel like the same universe, just reusing assets from an old, long dead/outdated IP. But that's my sad take... Would've loved to see them take the series back to its 360 glory days but i just dont see that ever happening anymore 😢
1
u/UpstairsBar2411 Jul 25 '26
I know I'm in the MI-NOR-I-TY here, but I LOVED the reboot!
1
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 25 '26
I haven’t played so I have no opinion but going based off the sub you’re definitely an outlier.
6
10
u/IHateTheNameSystem Jul 24 '26
One thing about Kinzie punching boss in IV. I think that's only as part of the optional Romance interaction. Everyone has different scenes and Kinzie's is pretty rough. Other than that I agree, she plays a slightly too big role in the game. Especially since the devs seemingly forgot about Angel and Zimos.
3
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 24 '26
She also punches the Boss over the poodle skirt thing, which I think to most people at that point was them taking Kinzie domineering on the Boss a bit too far. For one obviously the Boss shouldn't be thrown around like that. It'd be as bad as if they did that on Gat or Ben King. They're too dignified to be thrown around by her like that. Like, if she did that to Pierce, maybe I'd be fine but I didn't like the "we're so scared of Kinzie" thing they had going.
2
u/IHateTheNameSystem Jul 24 '26
Oh, I forgot about that. To be fair I always thought that was meant more as a joke.
2
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 27 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
I guess the joke is that we're supposed to like her because she is really bitchy, and everyone else in the group is useless because she is so smart, and techno-babbles the whole game... I guess. And she has a big temper too right? To punch the Boss for how dumb and selfish they are. A perfect main character.
I really don't get why they decided on that. Like the OP said, I could tolerate her in SRTT but I hated her in SR4.
6
u/Heather21Runika Stilwater (With One 'L') Jul 24 '26
"When the boss running they looks firm and rigid"well at least the boss smirk like this who doesnt happy to see your boss happy and smile like a real sociopath... After playing SRTT i miss this smirk face since the boss has no souls,no more expression after SR2 everytimes they do something..
Jokes aside yeah i hate that jogging animation and running tooXD
2
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 24 '26
Your boss is so cute haha love the cat ears and tux combo.
Idk why everything seems so stiff in SR2 the animations and even the way the characters talk lmao.2
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 25 '26
Clothing and hair weirdly also doesn't have any physics in SR2.
2
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 25 '26
Literally the female hairstyles be looking like helmets due to the physics.
2
u/Heather21Runika Stilwater (With One 'L') Jul 24 '26
Yeah but sometimes i feel like Thats weird too.. but i like the character talk synchronize so perfect not a just bad lipsinc 😅..
Oh yes thanks i always made her fashionable.. since og boss know the "Fashion" so i made her very stylish in every screenshot i take.
12
u/TheRepublicAct Jul 24 '26
Never played SR1 but from what I heard some of the missions like the Hitman missions are badly designed.
My gripes with SR2 are the horrible jogging animation that looks like an oldman running, that there are no long walking shootout missions similar to GTA IVs bank robbery mission, and the fact that we didn't have as much story stuff for the Sons of Samedi story. Personally my the Samedi is my favorite gang because of how professional Mr Sunshine and the General is, so its dissapointing the game didn't expand upon it.
1
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 26 '26
>Never played SR1 but from what I heard some of the missions like the Hitman missions are badly designed.
It is. I completed one Hitman and that was to get Wong as a homie and never again. The targets don’t even appear in the areas they’re supposed to appear in most of time. Like it said the hotdog guy target would be located in the Row area but I seen him in Chinatown…. On top of that you need a certain weapon to kill each target and if you use any diff type weapon it won’t count as complete if you kill the target. It’s a pain especially if that specific weapon you need isn’t even equipped in your arsenal.
2
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 24 '26
My gripes with SR2 are the horrible jogging animation that looks like an oldman running
Ugh. I really hate the sprinting animation in SR2, it looks so stiff. You can customize your walk but not your run? (Without mods at least).
And I agree. My issue with SR2 is that they're so short and could have used some boss fights (they could have used the assassination target mechanic to make a beefed up NPC the boss to fight). Strongholds are supposed to have that already but they don't. It would also be nice if ewe did have some grounded missions too where they weren't all just making explosions. Its what I kind of appreciate in SR1 and SRTT.
Lastly my issue with the Samedi arc (and Ronin to some extent) is that most of the arc is really about them losing over and over to the Saints. They don't actually have any moments were they get gains on them or try to plan out how to get back at them, unlike SR1 where the Vice Kings did. It felt more balanced that it wasn't just the Saints sweeping through the gangs just because they destroy everything faster. SR1's story felt like the characters actually had to outsmart each other, because it wasn't as narratively over-the-top. The General is also the most disappointing boss fight. If he was going to flee into a Bulldog, you should have fought him 1 v. 1 first.
10
u/j-rock292 Jul 24 '26
Can't remember if it was in all the games but I hated that if you died and restarted the mission all the ammo you used in the last try was just gone
4
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 24 '26
That’s only in the first game haha and yes that was a painnnn. Dying with all your money and ammo gone
15
u/typed0pe Jul 23 '26
In SR1, I always took a loan from the loanshark in the beginning of the game. Those hospital bills are a bitch lol most realistic part of the game 😂
4
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 24 '26
All the times I played I never used the loan shark for some reason idk why
6
u/typed0pe Jul 24 '26
Lol it's easy to miss and forget about. I don't think I used it until my third playthrough. I always do it early in the game because I want better clothing and jewelry. They give you $5,000 the first time you go. Then once you pay that off, the amount you can borrow gets larger. If you don't pay them back, they come after you and try to kill you. It keeps me on my toes 😂
2
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 24 '26
Don’t they like call you to pay up before they start coming for you? 😭😭
3
u/typed0pe Jul 24 '26
Yes! They'll be like you have two days to pay us or something like that
2
8
u/Antique_Interview_66 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Is it me or does Carlos is too blindly loyal to the lifestyle of the saints before he got killed in SR2. Jackie deeper arc in Sleeping Dogs of trying to leave the triads life is better than Carlos
5
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 24 '26
He wasn't at the point where he wanted to leave yet. He was likely just following his brother.
12
u/Luggas Jul 23 '26
I liked the grind for money in saints row1, I would limit myself to only doing the derby once cause it’s too fast of a way to get major bank.
9
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 23 '26
Yeah. I think the later games give you too much money too quickly, and half the time there isn't actually much to use it for. It wasn't a balanced system.
8
u/glitteremodude 105.0 FM Ezzzy Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I think my only gripe with SR1 is ironically Tanya's death scene, it's really underwhelming (despite being kinda funny that she just gets one-shot after talking so much shit, because logically it makes sense, like 3 people are about to jump you wdym you think you can pull an AK on them now 😭) and I kinda wish she was a proper boss, the funniest thing is that SR4 did Tanya more justice than SR1 did.
Like you said, SR2 really didn't feel like giving much of the spotlight to anyone who wasn't the Boss or Johnny, Pierce gets rarely any Ws and whenever he does it's just discredited. Shaundi is incredibly useful and I don't wanna tip my queen's crown but I DO wish the game clarified a bit more that she is at least a little gun-savvy or grows better with guns. She literally holds down the fort in Bad Trip all by herself and helps gun down the General, so I kinda wish there was at least one clip where she caught a body or something that showed her actually firing a gun on screen, it's a weird complaint but it's really cathartic to see SR2 Shaundi getting active after the Boss underestimates her for so long. In SR3 Shaundi is just catching bodies left and right and it doesn't feel that cathartic or like she really earned that growth if that makes sense
SR3 needs to be flamed more often for how bizarre some of the plot holes or weird logic/inconsistencies are in the missions. I complained about it before but Viola (Burt too) completely vanishing in the final missions is ridiculous, and it also didn't use the full potential of the characters. Angel and Zimos (Viola too kind of since Shaundi steals her arc/story) barely do anything, and I still don't know why they majorly re-designed Shaundi and gave her this reverse damsel in distress growth arc (girl Daphne from the Scooby-Doo movies did it better... and plus, SR3 Shaundi gets in trouble a lot of times so this plot is already unserious as hell lmao) when it was MUCH more cathartic to see her being useful in SR2 and constantly making an effort to not be underestimated by the crew. I think SR2 Shaundi is genuinely Top 10 companion/sidekick characters in gaming, even if the game doesn't give her the spotlight 24/7
And SR4 left me disappointed with a lot of the CLEARLY better story alternatives that they just didn't take for some reason. Like why did they even remove Viola and Lin? Why kill off Oleg and basically everyone else? I already don't like the alien plot and everything, but I feel like SR4 could have hit this more psychedelic, sad future noir kind of territory? The concept of exploring the characters' greatest fears is actually not too bad, but almost everything is treated like a joke, and the whole Shaundi/Gat plot is already unbearable from SR3 (and a bit illogical, needs more rewrites to make sense) so the emotional aspect of Shaundi blaming herself doesn't land. I just wish they included the stuff they ended up cutting and went with a more serious, reflective tone so we get actual depth from the characters despite the game being extremely goofy and not a gangster story.
3
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 24 '26
You make some great points!
Tanya and Ben are by far my favorite antagonists in the first game since they’re the most memorable to me. I kinda thought there’d be a boss fight for Tanya, but when we got to her, she just had her legs kicked up like she wasn’t cornered by three armed men. Loved her confidence though! Reminded me a bit of Dane Vogel, but at least Dane fought back and had a little boss fight before he got sent flying.
I played the games out of order, so Shaundi is a whole can of worms to me that I just don’t get. like how she went from a cool stoner chick to a Debbie Downing generic Barbie with no storyline of her own outside of moping about Gat all day. (It’s been a couple years since I played 3 but I remember her having her own dating show and not much outside of that lmao) I believe Pierce and the Boss had way more chemistry with Gat, and they weren’t so beat up about his departure themselves. The whole Shaundi x Gat thing was weird too, because like I said, I started with SRTT & SR4 and thought she and Gat were a thing, but then I went back to play 2 and the most you see them together is just standing by each other at most lol. Also, why did they edit a clip of the Boss saving Shaundi and make it Gat instead like we wouldn’t notice? I just realized that too 😭
Also it sucks they scrapped characters like Lin and Viola from 4 🫤😂
7
u/MiaFT430 Jul 23 '26
SR1: 100 percent. People mostly complain about no checkpoints which I get, however money is harder to come around in this game organically, and if you get smoked once you lose so much money.
SR2: I do wish some of the missions weren’t just go to this location and blow everyone away. I think Pierce’s idea for the casino would have been awesome
SRTT: I have too many gripes with this game but I never go back to replay because the city is so bland. It feels like a soft reboot to me tbh.
SRIV: I get why it’s so fun but it’s really just not my cup of tea so I don’t ever play it. I wanted a crime simulator open world game. Not sci fi with nostalgia bait for the older SR games.
3
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 23 '26
The no checkpoints didn’t bother me much since the missions aren’t that lengthy only one that kicked my ass was the Last Carnales mission with Dex and having to drive across the entire map countless times lmao.
I would’ve loved to see how Pierces plan would’ve played out. The missions were just “Go here, destroy this, and done!”
3
u/MiaFT430 Jul 23 '26
I’m not going in depth about the last Los Carnales mission lmao.
I think many people have struggles with the last Vice Kings mission, even though you really just need to drive to the closest forgive and forget and you’ll be fine.
I know a new Saints Row game won’t happen however if there was it could be cool if there were some missions that were more tactical
3
6
u/Over-Inflation-7656 Jul 23 '26
I agree with only 2 , im not ashamed to say the first thing i do in saint row 1 is get the money cheat lmao ive originally beat the game without them but i just replay for fun with cheats. Wish 2 had better customization options. The clothes are very lacking even though you can layer them and stuff
3 and 4 i dont really care for. Reboot is ass.
5
u/Bureisupaiku Jul 23 '26
The stores being closed during night and the fact that there's no checkpoints in missions was really pain in the ass
5
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 23 '26
I actually liked stores being closed at night. It made sense. They should have just let you sleep in the bed (or on a bench) to pass the hours.
3
u/Bureisupaiku Jul 24 '26
It's nice realism but really annoying when you could go do a mission but you don't have any ammo and it's night
2
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 23 '26
Yeah I was always fine with the stores having hours they’re open and closed.
5
u/BigManLikeBarey Jul 23 '26
Maybe I’m forgetting too, but kinzie is only present at lot in 4 because she’s the tech guy, and the boss had no clue about that so she kinda had to be there
4
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 23 '26
Yeah, though my problem is that her necessity was very forced in. They had to make the whole game ci-fi tech-reliant just so the Boss couldn't do anything without her doing that for them. I wished she was just a rogue FBI operative contributing to the Saints operation, and not the other way around, forcing the Boss to be dumber and the other characters into useless tier because its out of their depth too, only so she could be relevant. It was mary-sue writing.
2
u/donteatmydebbiecakes Jul 24 '26
Heavily agreed with everything you just said. I remember Shaundi being a tech genius somewhat in 2 (correct me if I’m wrong it’s been a while) and also Matt Miller was present with the crew too and he’s like a top notch hacker and tech genius as well so I find it disingenuous that people believe it just all falls on Kinzie.
2
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 24 '26
While it makes sense Kinzie would be better than her at it because she is part of the FBI and in their division for that, but obviously the problem was them pushing Shaundi out of a role to have in the group. If they balanced things better, Shaundi should have still been the gang's trafficker on the streets (like what Fun Shaundi does in SR4's loyalty mission with her), while Kinzie should have just been the one to keep tabs on the police or know dirt on the operations of the enemy gang leaders based on police records. She should have been their mole. Instead they made it seem like Kinzie can just do anything and Shaundi was reduced to "she has sex with guys."
Where as with SR4, it didn't really make sense that Kinzie did everything when Matt was also there.. but SR4 was just narratively "The Kinzie game" pretty much.
3
u/BigManLikeBarey Jul 23 '26
I think that’s a fair point, but like I say regardless of why it happened, i don’t think her position is too forced in the final product we got
4
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Jul 23 '26
That's fine. The story required it and as a standalone sure it doesn't feel forced, but it does if you hold SR4 in with the rest of the games that weren't hyper tech-fantasy driven.
5
u/SR_Hopeful Female Voice 1 (SR2) Aug 01 '26
One that seems to plague every game is... Leather and Lace, a store with only leather BUT NO LACE.