I gave an old man the middle finger, he threw his walker at me, pulled a knife out, and stabbed me until the police came and shot me.
11/10.

Still more optimized than Watch_Dogs™.

I purchased this game as part of the Saints Row Ultimate Franchise Pack, which was on sale at the time for about $18. I can honestly say this game has left me completely satisfied with my purchase, and despite having bought the bundle at the beginning of the summer, and played every day, it was at least a month before I even opened Saints Row 3 for the first time, because I was having so much fun playing Saints Row 2, and there is simply that much to do. With 233.8 hours on record as of my review, I still am only at about 95-97% completion on my first and only playthrough, because it was simply too much fun screwing around. Even after finishing the story missions, of which there are more than enough to make the game worth buying all by itself, there was still so much to do.

The controls took a bit of getting used to, but only at first. After a short while, any oddities control-wise felt completely natural, which is far from always the case when talking about ported titles. The only thing I could recommend a controller for would be the driving/piloting. While driving ground vehicles, the WASD keys don't quite give you the best experience, but they work perfectly fine for it. The main complaint I had about the game in general were the flight controls, which were awkward at first, but even after getting used to the layout, which wasn't that strange, it still lacked the ability to make small adjustments without losing control, unless you practice a lot. (I practiced a lot though, and mostly was able to work around it.) I got so accustomed to the keybindings in this game that I actually changed most of my SR3 keybindings to match (where they were different at least) because I found I honestly missed many of the default keybindings where they had been changed. Still, using a console controller for the air vehicles is probably your best option, if nothing else.

The graphics are far from amazing by current standards, but considering the time the game was made, they're perfectly solid, and the water still looks more real than watch dogs (you actually have a wake in a boat! HOW ADVANCED!! Sorry had to. considering I got this game in a huge bundle for only 18 dollars, I am not only satisfied, I would gladly have paid $18 dollars for this game alone, if I evaluated the value of the game solely on the amount of fun I had playing it. All in all, I fully recommend this game and hope others enjoy it as much as I have.

Warning: be EXTREMELY careful about this PC port.

Although Saint's Row 2 is one of my favourite games of all time, this PC conversion is the worst I've ever seen. It really is that bad.

Basically, the further away your PC spec is from an Xbox 360 the worse the game will run. (Apparently fixed on Win 8 machines) It also has numerous bugs, glitches and other "issues" and requires fan-made modding (seriously; REQUIRES) in order to get it to actually work as intended.

I will recommend this game, but only if you mod it to work properly. Google "Gentlemen of the Row" and then thank the creator with as much free beer as the internet can send.

His Steam FAQ link is here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1715922

The best Saints Row game made to this day.. The others are bigger and crazier but this one is the real deal.

It has the most alive city. There are lots of different individuals. People, constructions, cars and general theme changes from district the district. So you never get the feeling of hanging around same place over and over again.

Story is what it should be in an open world game. Three enemy gangs and you want to end them all. Simple. But the way they present it with missions is really impressive. There are lots of touching moments as well as action packed ones. In some mission I felt so angry that I find myself finishing all of the gangs mission in one play.

In my opinion GTA was always very linear. This one has three set of missions that you can do in whatever order you want. And if you are bored from doing it you have tons of funny activities.

Customization options are huge. For cars, gang and yourself. There are some crazy and useless ones but you could nearly create and ideal character for your taste.

So any cons? Yeah of course. Driving is kinda hard. Cars don't respond right most of the time and you feel driving a paper car or something. Graphics are out of date of course (which is not a problem for me because I have and old computer). Finishing activities can be so much hard sometimes, 6 level a bit hard, 3 is ideal I think. There are some bugs in some missions and graphics but they are not a big deal. And there are some problems with the default controls but I'm sure you can make it work. You get used to after a while.

In conclusion this game still has it. It has all the right touches. Yes it is an old game but still one of the best open world game I have played. I give it at least an 8 out 10. It is not expensive. So you should try it...

PS: You know what makes this game better, steam achievements.. And trading cards... Ohh I wish...
PS-2: I didn't play any other version of the game so I couldn't compare them. But this one worked just nice for my PC.

Played it recently and came to conclusion that the PC version of Saints Row 2 actually performs a little bit better than Watchdogs.

what

Edith: heh I didn't see that coming, proper review will be done somewhere in the future.

What's NOT to like about...
-Being the leader of a gang?
-Getting Revenge? (If you own the DLC. Obtainable through the Mod "Gentlemen of the Row"
-Trafficing drugs?
-Stealing cars?
-Having everyone in your gang look like Ninjas?
-Wearing Purple?
-Crashing into other cars?
-Killing cops?
-Killing Gang members opposed to yours?
-Killing innocent people?
-Stealing an aircraft only to crash it and walk away from it?
-Buying clothes to match your tastes?
-Getting into a fist fight with old people?
-Throwing people into Helicopters blades? (Very bloody)
-Holding up a store?
-Holding up a gun store with the gun you JUST bought?
-Gang banging?
-Running over old people?
-Running over stupid people?
-Stealing Hoes from pimps?
-Dressing like a pimp but being a hoe?
-Back handing people?
-Kicking people in the junk?
-Smoking a blunt?
-Getting Drunk?
-Driving high and drunk?
-Cutting people down with a katana?
-Blowing S%&^ up?
-Listening to Pierce whine?
-Watching Johnny blow S&^% up?
-Mercy killing a gang member?
-Killing bad guys?
-Being a bad guy?
-Making lots of money?

Doing ALL these things and more....while having fun!

"Saints Row B!tches!" -Random Guy Driving by.

Don't get me wrong, I would love this game, but it is an awful PC port and I highly recommend searching for the mod 'Gentlemen of the Row'. That mod makes gameplay much better.

This game has been flamed for being a terrible PC port, This is true. The game at times can feel like it is at 1.5x speed. Although, This game is still great. This is one of those games where I don't care how glitchy it can be, I just love it. Terrible port and I wish they fixed it. (I hear the mod known as Gentlemen Of The Row can fix alot of bugs and adds a bunch of stuff to the vanilla game.) If I had to say PC or console, I'd go console to watch cutscenes but PC for the actual gameplay. 8/10.

Gat is on another level.

The only game in existence where you can get both high and drunk, dress up in a hot dog suit, and then go four-wheeling in a mall, all at the same time, for absolutely no reason. 10/10

Held up a store with a fire hydrant 10/10

In my opinion, best one in the series.

Awesome game. Good controls, but driving is a bit oversensitive. Easily corrected with a mod called Gentlemen of the Row.

The game is awesome but the PC port is terrible.

Better than GTA

*Micheal Rosen voice* NOICE

While the game itself is fun, the PC port is terrible.

Saints Row 2 was released in 2009, but I can't play it at a constant framerate with a fairly modern system in 2014. While Saints Row 3 and 4 run smoothly at 60 frames per second, Saints Row 2 regulary drops to ~30 fps. While 30 fps wouldn't make it unplayable, the constant frame rate fluctuation does. The only "solution" I've come across so far is capping the frame rate through a third party tool.

While it is playable with an Xbox 360 controller, it is poorly implemented. Whenever a message pops up telling you which button to press, it shows you the keyboard keys -- really stupid, since the game was originally released on Xbox 360 (the mod "Gentlemen of the Row", among other things, fixes this issue and is generally recommended). Should you have played Saints Row 3/4 before Saints Row 2 and you want the same button mapping on your 360 controller for this one, you're out of luck due to conflicting button functions (you end up shooting and accelerating in your car at the same time).

This game needed a lot of patching, but support for this abomination of a port was quickly stopped -- leaving not only a broken game, but also a complete lack of DLC (which is available on the console versions).

Don't buy this port, no matter how cheap it is or how much you like the other Saints Row games.

**NOTE TO GERMAN PLAYERS: The German version is heavily(!) censored, making it even more terrible.**

Well where should I start.. This game is (atleast by my opinion) the best installment in the franchise. I had alot of fun with it I must say. STORY: Do you need to know the story of the first game? Well no but it's better if you do because there are some characters from the first Saints Row aswell as some references to it. I think the story is pretty decent (Even though there are about 8-9 missions and about 4-5 Stronghold mission for one gang). There are some touching moments (Most of them referring to the first game). GAMEPLAY: So I need to say that the combat with guns is pretty balanced. You can use just one pistol or two pistols in both hands but with having only one you have better aim but you can deal less damage at the time and if you use two of them you get less accurate but at close range you'll deal more damage (You see where I'm going?). This gives you the freedom in choosing what do you want to have. Then you have here the Respect Bar which serves for doing missions. When you level up your Respect Bar you can play missions. That means for example if you have no level in your Respect bar (Which decreases after doing a mission BTW) you can't play a mission. You need to do some side-activities to gain Respect and with it you can play missions afterwards. Which makes the game pretty long but yet still fun to play. Then you've got alot of shops for buying clothes,food (food in this game serves as a quick regeneration of your health),weapons,music for your very own radio and more. GRAPHICS: Well.. I won't talk about graphics being ugly because the game is pretty old but in my opinionthey're pretty good but the thing here is how the game is optimized. To be honest it has pretty bad console port. Sometimes it get's unplayable when you get into a larger fight. But you can reduce that to minimum or get rid of it completely by some methods and programs. But my final verdict about this game is 9.5/10 because if it didn't had those problems with optimization I would gladly give it 10/10.

Like Skyrim with custom characters