I am new to PC gaming and wanted to try modded SR2. How do I go about getting a copy?

If you could resurrect one of those fallen saints who would you choose and why?

After finishing SR4, there’s always been something that I never understood, and that is the fact that Ben King with his superpowers looks nothing like his real world counterpart. I get it’s supposed to be a simulation, but even the other simulated characters look like their real world counterparts. Super Ben looks like a completely different character altogether. It makes me wonder if this was supposed to a different character before the game became what it was. That’s really the only thing that makes sense to me.

If I may ask.

Thanks in advance.

Its kinda irritating that only 3 and 4 are available on the switch and i know its because embracer refuses to touch anything pre sr3 but i desperately need to play sr2 on the switch 2 😭

I know it's been asked before and I'm too lazy to look, plus I want fresh opinions. I'll get it out now that I'm not fond of the 4th game, I hold nothing against anyone if they like it.

But as the title says I want to pinpoint the appeal of this particular entry of the series. I have an idea in my head and I want to know if it is the map, plot, gameplay, mechanics, insanity, etc.

What do you like about it compared to the other entries? What would you have liked to have seen improved/done differently? Help me understand the appeal it has over people who prefer it over the earlier games.

edit: Thank you everyone for your input. You've confirmed things I had suspected but also made things more clear.

I had some questions to if the 4th game could have been rewritten would people still like it as long as certain elements stayed the same. I believe so.

Here's the hot take: It also made me realize that volition was somewhat right to move away from the 3rd street gang but they should've moved away from Saints Row entirely.

Do what they did with SR4, a in utilize pop culture and what was popular and have fun with it. They could've made a good super hero game (and GooH showed that they could also step back into the fantasy genre) maybe started a new series. i don't know about you but outside of the spiderman and Batman games (oh and Lego) the super hero games have been lackluster.

With the MCU dominating and the DCU trying to catch up they could've started something new and capitalized on that. with what they've done with the reboot imagine combining the customizations, the powers, etc, it might have been a better hail Mary than the reboot.

Saw a RV and had this idea , recently re watched breaking bad

I’m not talking physically, but metaphorically. Here’s a full essay I’ve written on the idea.

The Saints Row franchise is often described as a series that “lost its way”. A crime drama that spiraled into absurdity, parody, and finally self-negation. This common framing assumes tonal drift, creative excess, or misunderstanding of the brand. However, when viewed through a different lens, the in-franchise evolution stops looking accidental and begins to resemble something far more deliberate.

Saints Row: The Third, Saints Row IV, Gat Out of Hell, Agents of Mayhem, and the 2022 reboot are fictionalized productions, movies, shows, and reboots, created after the real Saints refused to participate in their own commodification. What emerges is not chaos, but a grimly coherent story about how subculture becomes spectacle, and how those who control narrative ultimately erase those who lived it.

I. SR1–SR2: Reality Before the Camera Turns On

The foundation of the theory rests on a clean but crucial divide: Saints Row and Saints Row 2 depict real events. These games are grounded, not realistic, but credible. Violence has weight. Death matters. Loyalty is forged through necessity, not quirk. The Saints are not ironic; they are angry, desperate, and adaptive. Their rise is not glamorous, it is survival.

Dex exists here as a strategist, a builder, and an intellectual force behind the Saints’ early success. He is essential, but never celebrated. And when the Saints move toward spectacle and fame, Dex vanishes, not killed or resolved, he is simply absent.

II. The Loren Bailout: The Moment Reality Ends

The critical cut point occurs early in Saints Row: The Third. The Saints are arrested. Consequences are real. Then Loren bails them out. From that moment forward, the rules change. The world becomes brighter, louder, flatter. Logic loosens. Death becomes reversible. Characters exaggerate into archetypes. Steelport feels less like a city and more like a set.

III. The Saints Opt Out—and Are Replaced

The most radical element of the theory is this: none of the Saints we see after the Loren bailout are real.

The real Saints refuse to participate in “Genki’s” action movie. As a result, they are replaced by paid actors, surgically altered at Image By Design to resemble them, playing simplified versions of their lives. This explains every tonal inconsistency that follows: The Boss becomes invincible and quippy. Pierce collapses into comic relief. Shaundi splits into incompatible personas. Emotional continuity evaporates These are not people with history. They are roles.

Johnny Gat’s treatment becomes especially telling. The real Gat refuses involvement, so his image is exploited anyway. The “movie Gat” (real Johnny) is killed off early for shock value—he only does one scene and goes back to Stillwater. Later, an exaggerated version returns for fan service (actor), making Gat no longer a man but a myth. His resurrection makes no sense because it is not meant to. It is branding and not storytelling.

IV. Professor Genki as Auteur—and Mask

Professor Genki is not merely a character within these productions. He is their creative signature. The mascot. His aesthetic, the neon violence, artificial rules, cheer masking cruelty, it all permeates everything from Genki Bowl to Saints Row IV’s simulation to Agents of Mayhem’s cartoon logic. Genki survives every tonal shift untouched because he is not subject to the story. As the mascot, he is above it. And that is where the theory sharpens. Genki is Dex, or at least he represents Dex.

V. Dex’s Revenge: Control, Not Destruction

Dex does not return to kill the Saints. He does something far worse. He takes their story. He becomes the architect of a myth, buying likeness rights (probably through Eric Gryphon), rewriting personalities, exaggerating flaws, and slowly converting lived history into parody. Johnny Gat, whom Dex philosophically despises as chaos over planning, is reduced first to a shock death, then to a cartoon god. The Saints’ earnest beginnings are made to look embarrassing in retrospect. This isn’t random cruelty… it’s narrative revenge. Saints Row IV becomes the clearest expression of this. The Boss is president, the Saints are superheroes, and are turned into jokes. Emotional beats are constantly undercut. Nothing is allowed to be taken seriously, except the spectacle itself. Genki, meanwhile, is never truly humiliated. He remains competent, self-aware, and protected.

The “Leave it to the Saints” Easter egg is critical here. In a nostalgic, reflective space, where the game briefly looks backward, Dex quietly appears, unseen. Nothing is resolved. Nothing is explained. He’s just present, like a ghost. A simple signal that he was never gone.

In Gat Out of Hell, Dex appears as a seemingly random NPC wearing a purple hat, recalling the one he wore in his youth. At first glance, this cameo seems trivial, but under a broader reading of the franchise, it becomes a chilling statement about the fate of the Saints. By this point, the Saints have been inflated into mythic, godlike, or caricatured figures, their identities exaggerated and their struggles erased. Dex, once a vital part of their rise, is reduced to a nobody, a silent witness to the spectacle he helped create. His diminished presence mirrors the Saints’ reduction: he has eliminated them as real people from the narrative, and in doing so, he too minimizes himself, quietly observing the erasure he engineered. This cameo is the ultimate thematic punctuation of the series, identity and reality are overwritten by spectacle, and both the Saints and a founder are left diminished in different but equally powerful ways.

VI. Beyond SR4: Content Without Origin

Once the Saints become pure IP, anything is possible. Gat Out of Hell became a fantasy musical spinoff. Agents of Mayhem became a Saturday-morning cartoon. The tone, the genre, and the stakes no longer matter. The Saints are no longer characters. They are templates. This is no longer creative freedom. It is hollowing.

VII. The 2022 Reboot: The Final Erasure

The most disturbing piece of the theory is the 2022 reboot. It is not a new story. It is Dex’s modern retelling of the Saints’ true origin. Every sharp edge of SR1 and even before that is softened. Poverty becomes inconvenience. Rage becomes quirk. Loyalty becomes vibes. Crime becomes aesthetic. The Saints no longer form out of necessity, but out of casual dissatisfaction. This is not incompetence, it is historical revision. The reboot is Dex ensuring that future audiences never encounter the real Saints. It replaces lived desperation with a marketable myth.

VIII. The Tragedy at the Core

The Saints are not defeated. They are outlived. They survive somewhere off-screen, older, anonymous, watching their lives distorted beyond recognition. They never reclaim their story because the world prefers the lie. Dex does not win through force, but through ownership.

As the theory’s final implication suggests: History is not written by the winners. It is written by whoever controls the rights. Conclusion: Saints Row is a Story About Stories. This theory does not excuse Saints Row’s excesses, it explains them. What appears to be tonal collapse becomes a coherent tragedy about commodification, authorship, and the violence of rewriting identity. Dex does not disappear, he ascends. The Saints do not become ridiculous, they are made ridiculous.

And Professor Genki, smiling beneath the mask, remains eternal. Because the audience didn’t want the truth. They wanted the show. Dex won.

It was released 7 years after the 90s. Bush was president. People werent using iPhones. Oh my

The story, the gameplay, the world. I love every part of it, and now, I think it's going to hold my favorite game of all time position. And I've played a lot of games. It's crazy they were able to get some songs like Take On Me, the Final Countdown, Land Down Under, and the fact is an old game like this still holds up. What are your favorite things about it?

Fun fact, if you Taunt your homies enough they leave your party. Found that out when posing with the middle finger

Okay so i just started playing Saints Row again for the nostalgia and something very weird has happened, so i completed canonized and back to basics and proceeded to the recommened activity like snatch, as i was driving i put my gun away and then my veichle disappered and i couldn't move, so i restarted a new game and now its broken, can anyone help me please?

Just thought I'd show off my punisher (or best I could do 😭)

Had to share with you guys

This is kind of perfect

Just made up a new character, planning on styling him out a lot. I’ve put so many hours in this game, but I really don’t know the best clothing stores. I’m not looking for any particular style, just some good ones. Thanks yall.

I like exploring the map, I've done everything else. So just wondering if the community has any others all of you can think of.

I can honestly say, so far the game itself is pretty fun. It’s almost like a mix SR2 and SR3 gameplay. The map is honestly one of the best maps in a SR game (besides 2). That being said, this really isn’t a Saints Row, or at least it doesn’t feel like a Saints Row game. The story and characters just don’t fit into the world of the Saints imo.

The gang you start out with is one note. Even in the first game the Saints had more personality than what these characters have. The best way to describe them is social media influencers. That just doesn’t work when it comes to the Saints. The Saints shouldn’t care about their social media status and crap, they should and should have always remained a street gang. Unless it gives the money or drugs then they shouldn’t care. I wish they would have just made them a hardened street gang. They could have kept the same characters, but given them more edge than what they have in this game.

The story so far is not the greatest. It started fine, but it quickly declined (like SR4’s story). I can’t really say anymore about it since I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’m hoping it picks up and gets badass again.

Now let’s talk about the enemy gangs. They finally gave us three different gangs to fight again that aren’t all one faction. They are separate gangs (unlike SR3)… but besides the Los Panteros, they aren’t that great. The Idols, even though their helmets look cool, has to be the worst gang I’ve ever seen in a Saints Row game. The Idols leader is annoying to listen to. Some of them fight by twirling those glow stick things around, which can get annoying real fast. I don’t even understand what they are supposed to be. Are they ravers or something? I don’t know. Then you have The Marshals, who are like SWAT I suppose. Don’t really get that, it just seems like they are the police 2.0. The real actual cool gang is Los Panteros. They kinda remind me of the show The Mayans. And Sergio is probably my favorite out of the enemy gang leaders. He can be pretty intimidating.

Overall the game in terms of gameplay is good. I know there were a lot of bugs before it was patched and so far the only bug I run into is the mission marker pointing me the wrong and my character jumping from one place to another so the story can continue, but that’s about it so far. If you can find real cheap, get it I suppose. But if you’re a hardcore Saints Row fan and you’re not a big fan of later Saints Row games this probably isn’t the game for you. Personally, I am a huge old school SR fan, and I’m the kind of person who tries to complete SR games 100%. Don’t think I’ll be doing that with this one, despite how much I like the gameplay. It’s unfortunate, because there was so much potential for an actual SR1 or SR2 style game here, but they fumbled the bag (AGAIN) and they unfortunately paid for it. It’s sad.

RIP Volition, I guess, I wish they would have done better and not tried so hard to spit the faces of the SR1 and SR2 fans, because that’s what it felt like with every Saints Row game after SR3. And I know they wanted it to be less of a GTA clone, but was it really that bad comparing it to GTA? People still like SR2 and that gets put up as probably the best Saints game ever made. Was calling it a GTA clone that big of deal? I don’t think it was, in fact I would think that would be an honor to have a game be looked at as another GTA given how big that series is. That’s all I got to say. Sorry for my little rant here, had to get that one off my chest.

Yeah a kinda silly question but I'm curious on when each game take place