Poll: Which was better: Saints Row 2 or Saints Row: The Third

[camscottbryce]

As others have said Saints Row three because of how bad the PC port was, never got around to playing the Xbox version of either and didnt own a 360 when the first one came out. Got SR2 with as part of a discounted bundle on Steam, it was so shockingly bad it turned me off the series and even though I knew it was because of the shitty port I could never bring myself to get the console version event though it should have been better.

Having played SR3 though I think its probably better as it has its own place, Saints Row is like messing around in GTA with cheats. Its all about the silliness.

Off topic: I am REALLY starting to hate the term GTA clone, and people using it as a strike against the first 2 Saints Row games!

This. I can kind of see where people are coming from, but they're too different styles of games. Just because they are "criminal, open world, sandbox" games does not mean they are GTA clones.

A game being a GTA "clone" isn't necessarily a bad thing either, they can still be fun games. I have been on and off playing through the PS+ Sleeping Dogs and its on OK game, I probably wouldn't buy it unless it was on sale but its still a perfectly playable and entertaining game.

Edit,

I wonder how much the DLC affects how much people like Saints Row the third, there is a seriously huge amount of it. The amount of content is pretty staggering, is the game a lot worse off without it? Never played the vanilla release, got the complete edition in a Steam sale so I do not know what its like without the DLC.

Being a GTA clone certainly isn't a bad thing, but I just don't think that's what it is. Even the first game had it's own nuances, the feel is different in these games.

As for DLC, I played SRTT vanilla first, and then bought some DLC, and it just felt like pointless activity add-ons and over-the-top, funny-for-one-second gags that you laugh at and move on in an instant. So I guess I almost see vanilla as better? Wow. It's just that it's a more concise experience (despite not being nearly as concise as SR2). Many may disagree, but oh well.

Honestly, the OTT-ness of the Third could be entertaining at times, but it got boring real fast.

 

[SweetLiquidSnake]

Was that my post you were talking about lol?

 

[camscottbryce]

Was that my post you were talking about lol?

No, it was the one about super powers and the dubstep gun in which I lost my shit.

 

[SweetLiquidSnake]

Was that my post you were talking about lol?

No, it was the one about super powers and the dubstep gun in which I lost my shit.

Oh, cuz I made a post a few days ago about how the series has just declined and now even more rapidly, and how I hope this is the last game in the series.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

SR2 was much better. I find it sad that one of the reasons people are saying that SR3 is better is because SR2 had a bad PC port. Sorry but that doesn't make SR3 a better game. On console, SR2 was amazing.

And what PC players (I'm a PC gamer) are forgetting is that SR3 was borderline broken upon release for a long time when it came out on PC. The reasons why SR2 is better have been stated quite well in this thread.

Edit: One point I will add is that SR3 needed to force its over the top attitude, which makes it look worse when compared to SR2, a game that just had more options. Period.

 

[bossfight1]

Saints Row the Third had the best gameplay of the lot. The writing was absolutely hilarious, and the game's soundtrack was great. Definitely pumped for Saints Row 4.

 

[thehorror2]

SR2 was the first game in the series I played, and to my mind is the paragon of what a sandbox shooter should be: silly (but surprisingly witty and well-written) plot, lots of character customization, no locked-out content (I'm looking at you, GTA4) and the ability to revisit any area at any time. SR3 has a bunch of gameplay fixes I miss whenever I go back to SR2, but the plot of that game, along with the banality of so many "missions" (that are just reskinned activities) is just too much vanilla to keep my attention for long. Part of why I make note of the things that SR3 fixes is that I get bored and go back to SR2 SO OFTEN.

SR2 had truly memorable villains (Maero, Mr. Sunshine), awesome cutscenes (pretty much any fight in the Ronin storyline) and surprisingly heavy plot beats.(Carlos!)

SR3 kills Johnny Gat off-screen, and then milks his death for DLC.

 

[StupidNincompoop]

saints row 1. (And apparently only the second person in this thread who seems to think so)

SR1 was one of the very few reasons i even bought a 360 in the first place. If it wasn't for that then i'd have probably have never even bothered with a 360.

The gameplay was tight, the physics were kind of wobbly at times but otherwise they seemed to be some of the best physics in any game at the time, the game had plenty of customisation, the controls worked well, just everything in the game more or less handled well.
The main reason i bought the game is that the drug trafficking missions looked really fun- and they were.


SR2 was okay, but not as good as the original. The game went slightly too overboard on the wackiness, the physics seemed worse, the controls seemed to be more stiff than SR1, and whilst it did have more weapons, the weapons just didn't seem to be as fun to use. Dual wielding was an improvement though. Oh, also, the activities seemed to not be as fun as they were in the original.

SR3 was just a complete train wreck. the amount of wackiness,over-the-top actiony gameplay that was added to it was kind of like having a ready meal in the microwave for about an hour too long. It seems like nothing but just generic action B-movie type stuff. It pretty much just took the previous two titles and threw away everything that was good about them, but left the bad parts.
Movement looks clunkier, weapons look boring, the missions look painful to complete, the side missions are basically gone and replaced with other random shit that isn't as fun, the graphics look worse, the soundtracks are worse, pretty much everything is worse.

 

[Xan Krieger]

SR2 had truly memorable villains (Maero, Mr. Sunshine), awesome cutscenes (pretty much any fight in the Ronin storyline) and surprisingly heavy plot beats.(Carlos!)

SR3 kills Johnny Gat off-screen, and then milks his death for DLC.

I felt one of the heaviest plot points was when you stuffed Maero's girlfriend in the trunk of her car and parked it at that monster truck event. When he landed on that car...wow. That was worse than when that ronin kid got buried alive because in this case her own boyfriend accidentally squished her.
Also how could they kill Johnny Gat? I hated that, he was my favorite character. You'd think they'd have killed of Shaundi since she changed from unique character to generic female supporting character.

I preferred SR2, it had more context behind things like why you're covering mansions in shit or why you're filming a cop show that promotes excessive force. SR3 never explained all that, it was wacky for the sake of being wacky.

 

[MortisLegio]

Saints Row 2 was a ton of fun and was grounded enough to make the strange portions of the game funnier. 3 just threw everything at you and felt like it was just trying to be wacky for wackiness sake. Other than some minor control improvements and the somewhat cool "super" weapons, there really wasn't anything I would say was an improvement over 2.

 

[camscottbryce]

As a side point, I'd like to add this:

Wackiness is okay. Not a bad thing. 1 and 2 had wackiness. Even 4, with it's presidential plot and aliens and superpowers could be totally FINE. But the thing is, you need a reason for all of that to be in there. Not just "Oh, Saints Row universe is a CRaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy universe, so all of this stuff makes sense." People who are looking for actual narrative context do not find it in SR3.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

2. It had wacky parts and let loose occasionally, but it was also serious at points too. It toed that line very well. 3? It was so over-the-top and wacky that it became boring and I felt no actual investment in the story or characters.