Quick answer: A decent, dated, funny open world crime game that was nowhere near worth its launch price and is very much worth its current one. Critics landed at 63 on OpenCritic with only 37% recommending it. Steam players sit at Mixed. The part most posts leave out: it arrived on Steam on 24 August 2023, and Volition was shut down seven days later after 30 years. It was the studio's last game.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
The 2022 Saints Row is a reboot, not a sequel. New city, new crew, new boss, no Johnny Gat. Volition built it, Deep Silver published it, and it landed on 23 August 2022 after a six month delay. You play a custom character who founds the Saints with three housemates and takes Santo Ileso off three rival factions.
Most articles about this game were written in the first week, when it was a $59.99 release with a bad launch patch. Almost everything about that situation has changed. Here is the version that holds up now.
What the scores actually say
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
| Source | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| OpenCritic | 63, "Weak" | Around 159 critics, only 37% recommend it, 20th percentile |
| Metacritic, by platform | 61 to 65 | PS5 at the bottom, Xbox Series at the top. The lowest in the whole series |
| Steam users | Mixed | Hovering around 57% to 60% positive across roughly 8,000 reviews |
| Steam, recent reviews | Around 63% positive | Slightly better than lifetime. Cheap buyers are kinder |
| Metacritic users | 3.3 out of 10 | About 1,400 ratings, 65% of them negative |
Treat that 3.3 with caution. A critic score of 63 and a user score of 3.3 are not describing the same gap in quality. Saints Row was review bombed hard by fans angry about the reboot's new cast and tone before many of them had played it. The Steam figure, which requires ownership, is the more honest number, and it says Mixed, not disaster.
The critic consensus is consistent and fair. Fun gunplay, outstanding character customisation, a generous amount of content, buried under an empty open world, repetitive mission design, a cast people did not warm to, and a huge number of bugs at launch. GameSpot and IGN both gave it a 6. Game Informer gave it 8.5. Nobody was lying, they just weighted the bugs differently.
If you want the wider pattern here, we broke it down in why big budget games stopped being fun, and The Division 2 is the clearest case of a game whose launch reviews stopped being accurate.
The part nobody puts in the review: Volition is gone
This matters if you are deciding whether to buy, because it tells you exactly how much support the game will get from here, which is none.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 25 Feb 2022 | Original release date. Delayed by six months |
| 23 Aug 2022 | Launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Stadia and Epic Games Store only on PC |
| Nov 2022 | Embracer says the game "did not meet the full expectations and left the fanbase partially polarised", and moves Volition from Deep Silver to Gearbox |
| 13 Jun 2023 | Embracer announces a restructuring programme after a roughly $2 billion deal collapses |
| 8 Aug 2023 | A Song of Ice and Dust, the final expansion, launches |
| 24 Aug 2023 | Steam release, a full year after everyone else got it |
| 31 Aug 2023 | Volition closed, effective immediately, after 30 years. Illinois state layoff filings record 183 jobs |
| Sep 2023 | The game arrives on PlayStation Plus, days after the studio that made it stopped existing |
Seven days between the Steam launch and the closure. Volition started life in 1993 as Parallax Software, made Descent, then Red Faction, then five Saints Row games. The Saints Row and Red Faction names now sit with Plaion inside Embracer. No patches are coming. Whatever state the game is in today is the state it stays in.
On sales figures, be careful what you repeat. The widely quoted "1.7 million units" comes from a former Volition community manager's LinkedIn profile, not from Embracer. The "over $100 million development cost" comes from reporting on an Embracer earnings call. Embracer itself only ever publicly said "over one million players" and that the game performed in line with management expectations for the quarter. Players and units are not the same thing. Treat all three numbers as estimates.
The price collapse, in full
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
This is the single most useful thing to know before you buy, and no launch review could have told you it:
| Edition | Launch price | List price now | Drop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $59.99 | $29.99 | 50% |
| Gold, game plus Expansion Pass | $89.99 | $39.99 | around 56% |
| Platinum | $99.99 | Varies by store | Heavily cut |
| Gold in a typical sale | $89.99 | Around $9.99 | About 89% |
Our own calculation on that last row: a sale price near ten dollars for the Gold Edition is roughly a ninth of what a launch buyer paid for the same content. Sale prices move constantly, so check the store, but the pattern has held for over two years. The Expansion Pass has been discounted by 85% or more on its own.
What the paid add-ons are
- Expansion Pass, roughly $14.99 to $15.99 depending on store, covering all three expansions
- The Heist and the Hazardous, the first expansion
- Doc Ketchum's Murder Circus, around $4.99, an arena style mode in the spirit of the old Professor Genki activities
- A Song of Ice and Dust, around $7.99, five missions and a new district, finishable in about two hours, and generally rated the best of the three
The pass costs less than buying the parts separately, and far less in a sale. There are no microtransactions in the game, which is genuinely worth saying out loud.
How it plays, honestly
The character creator is the best thing here, and it is not close. You can build almost anything, you can change it at any point for free, and the game commits to whatever you make. That alone sold a lot of copies.
Combat is solid. Shooting is punchy, takedowns restore health in a loop borrowed from DOOM, and the skill unlocks you earn while levelling genuinely change fights. Driving is arcade and forgiving. Wingsuiting around Santo Ileso is fun for a surprisingly long time.
The problems are structural. Main missions are only about a third of a campaign that runs somewhere near 25 hours. The rest is Criminal Ventures, and because those ventures are your main income and income gates the story, you cannot really ignore them. Some are great, like Insurance Fraud. Some are hauling cargo slowly across the map. The map is blanketed in icons, and the business management layer is thinner than it sounds, mostly just choosing which front goes on which plot.
The tone divides people. The reboot aimed for grounded friendship comedy rather than the full absurdity of Saints Row IV, so the three housemates feel more like flatmates than criminals, which clashes with the body count. If you loved the dildo bat era, you will feel the restraint. If you preferred the first two games, you will find more to like than you expect.
Two things reviews undersold. Accessibility is strong, with sliders for incoming damage, time limits and aim assist, and full controller remapping. Two player co-op covers the entire campaign, progress carries both ways between your solo save and your co-op session, and having someone to laugh with makes the filler missions far more tolerable.
For bigger open worlds to compare against, see our map size comparison, and everything we know about GTA 6 covers the game this one is always measured against.
PC requirements
| Part | Minimum |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
| CPU | Ryzen 3 1200 or Core i3 3240 class |
| RAM | 8GB |
| GPU | Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 970 class |
| DirectX | Version 11 |
| Storage | Around 40GB. Check the store page, since the expansions were added after that figure was published |
A GTX 970 and 8GB of RAM is a low bar in 2026. On a 40GB download, a 100Mbps connection pulls it down in roughly an hour, and a 25Mbps connection takes closer to three and a half hours.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Looking for a two player open world game | Buy on sale | Full campaign co-op with shared progress is rarer than it should be |
| Into deep character customisation | Buy | Still one of the best creators in any open world game, and free to change any time |
| A Saints Row 3 or 4 diehard | Wait for a deep sale | The restraint in tone is exactly what you will dislike. At ten dollars it is an easy gamble |
| Hoping bugs got fixed | Know the limit | It was patched a lot through 2022 and 2023, but the studio is closed, so this is the final version |
| A PlayStation Plus subscriber | Check your library first | It was a Plus offering in September 2023. You may already own it |
| Expecting a GTA rival | Skip | It is not that, it was never going to be that, and the world is its weakest part |
Verdict
A flawed, generous, sometimes very funny open world game that was priced like a blockbuster and reviewed like one. At thirty dollars it is reasonable. In a ten dollar sale with the Expansion Pass it is a bargain, especially with a friend. The world is hollow, the busywork is real, and the cast will not win everyone over, but the shooting, the customisation and the co-op are better than the 63 suggests. Just go in knowing that Volition is gone and this is the finished article, for good.
Frequently asked questions
Is Saints Row 2022 a sequel or a reboot?
A full reboot. New city, new characters, no connection to the Boss or Johnny Gat from the earlier games. It is the fifth main entry but the story starts from scratch.
Why is the user score so much lower than the critic score?
A mix of real complaints about launch bugs and heavy review bombing from fans unhappy with the reboot's tone and cast. The Steam rating, which requires owning the game, sits at Mixed, and that is the fairer reading.
Does it have co-op?
Yes, two player co-op across the whole campaign. Progress you make in a friend's game carries back to your own save and the other way round.
How long is it?
Around 25 hours to see it through, with main story missions making up roughly a third of that. The three expansions add several more hours on top.
Will it get any more updates or a sequel?
No more updates. Volition closed on 31 August 2023 and this was its last game. The Saints Row name is still owned inside Embracer, held by Plaion, so a future game is possible, but nothing has been announced.
Is it worth buying the Expansion Pass?
Only in a sale, where it often drops by 85% or more. A Song of Ice and Dust is the strongest of the three. Doc Ketchum's Murder Circus is the weakest.
Which version should I buy on PC?
Either Steam or Epic. Steam only got it on 24 August 2023 after a year of Epic exclusivity, so the Epic listing has a longer discount history, but the Steam version is the same game and easier to refund.
Where to go next
- Goat Simulator 3, if the chaotic sandbox part is what you came for
- Evil West, another mid budget action game that found its audience after launch
- Borderlands 4, from Gearbox, the studio Volition was handed to
- Open world map sizes compared, to see where Santo Ileso really ranks
- Browse more Open World, Action and Multiplayer guides
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