Saints Row (series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


YMMV Tropes that span the whole series

  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Is the main character a Well-Intentioned Extremist out to clean up Saints Row and protect it from evil corporations or is he a Crazy Awesome Heroic Sociopath out for himself? A Complete Monster? Some combination of all three?
    • The ending of #2 make it clear. The Boss just wants power and money, and all the benefits of those. He's not a good person.
      • Julius' motivations never change. He's always trying to clean up Saints Row. However, his methods of doing so actually don't stand up to close scrutiny. After using the Saints to wipe out the other gangs, Julius decapitated them and turned them over to the police. Even if you think this gross act of betrayal was warranted, he just made a power vacuum for other gangs to fill.
      • It gets worse. Julius actually didn't intend for there to be a power vacuum. He'd made deals with the Columbian drug cartels and did things the Vice Kings never would have done under King's leadership. He only betrayed the Saints once the police took him into custody.
    • The third game actually asks this question and allows the player to choose whether main character slides closer to being an Anti-Hero or right back to worst aspects of their character from the second game depending on the ending choice.
    • The fourth game assumes the more heroic ending is canon, but still leaves room to make one wonder If The President was more interested in kicking Zinyak's ass or really cared about humanity in the end.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: A couple amidst the Complete Monsters the Player/Boss fought against, but a few stand out.
    • Shogo Akuji comes across as one. Once his father arrives from Japan, his arrogant attitude feels like a complete facade to cover up his internal misery. After all, his father states outright, to Shogo's face, seemingly whenever possible, that he is actively and constantly ashamed of Shogo's very existence as a member of his family. Considering that his presumed death at the hands of Gat only comes when he confronts Gat and the Boss in a fit of rage after his father mourns not just the loss of his surrogate son (Shogo's second-in-command), but also the fact that all he's left with is Shogo. He says this. To Shogo's face. Left at a Despair Event Horizon, Shogo tries to kill the heads of the Saints, thinking them the cause of all his problems.
    • A bit of an Ensemble Darkhorse for this category, but Maero can qualify as well. He tells Vogel that his reasons for wanting the Saints wiped out isn't because they're stealing from him, encroaching on his territory, etc, but because, "...they killed my girlfriend and crippled my best friend." This is after the Boss initiated the entire conflict by scarring Maero's face with toxic waste after Maero gave him a partnership offer he didn't like.
      • Note that The Boss only scars his ((Maero's)) face in retaliation of the initial deal. The other actions mentioned above didn't happen until after Maero and Jessica chained Carlos, one of the boss' lieutenants and the man who helped him/her escape prison, to the back of a truck and dragging him through the streets, forcing the boss to put him down for good.
      • Vogel himself gets this in a technically posthumous way when Johnny and Kinzie meet him in Hell in Gat Out Of Hell. While he's technically the Big Good of the game for Enemy Mine reasons, you find out he wasn't always a one dimensional Corrupt Corporate Executive as portrayed in the second game, especially if you hunt down all of his diary logs.
  • Complete Monster: The Boss may border on this (with casual disregard for civilian life and his murder of Julius, who founded the gang to keep the city out safe and free from other gangs, but The General and Mr. Sunshine are this in spades. Their complete lack of regard for human life (including their own gang members) separates them from the more sympathetic gang leaders.
    • Killbane. He has absolutely no problem with murdering his own lackeys solely to fuel his planet-sized ego. Cemented when he brutally murders Kiki simply for calling him by his real name, then tries to "console" her twin Viola by offering her free tickets to Murderbrawl.
    • Zinyak immediately crossed into this when he blew up the Earth, just to make a point he was serious, though given his backstory, he was at least on the border of this trope anyway.
  • Crazy Awesome: Johnny Gat, the Boss.
    • The games themselves. If the first one was too straight laced the sequel has side missions doing stunts from Jackass and spraying everything with raw sewage. The third game has man canons and a mission where you speed around with a tiger in the passenger seat.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Always a great selection of licensed music.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Johnny Gat, Maero (to a lesser extent), and Shaundi (in the second game at least).
    • Zimos is very well liked, to the point that many fans were pissed that he wasn't in Saints Row IV. He did appear briefly in Enter the Dominatrix and is available as a Homie afterward.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Tanya Winters, who ultimately becomes the chief antagonist of the Vice Kings arc.
  • The Face of the Band: The majority of the Saint's merchandise is based on Johnny Gat, from the Gat-faced Gatmobile, to the Gat-bobblehead mascots.
  • Flanderization: The first game was a humorous open-world crime game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that was lauded as a legitimate alternative to GTA. The second game emphasized the humor and wackiness more (with trailers taking jabs at GTA's newfound seriousness). The marketing for the third game makes the wackiness and crude humor the main selling point of the game. Whether this is the franchise finding its true voice and stepping out from under GTA's shadow or abandoning what made the first game great, YMMV
  • Follow the Leader: More than a few reviewers and fans criticized the first game for being a " GTA clone".
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: When she calls a radio show with a request for her and Maero's anniversary the host says how they're gonna make it. Ay yup.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight. In the second game Shaundi was voiced by Eliza Dushku, and in the third game it's mentioned she really wants to meet the actor who plays Nightblade. Given one of the influence of the character this is amusing.
  • Moral Event Horizon: For the player character after the bonus mission in the second game. Before that point, you can easily convince yourself that you're doing it to stop the violence, return order to the streets, and potentially slow down or stop the drug trade. After the player murders Julius, though, it really sets in that your character does not care about any of this - the city is his/her's, and he/she's going to keep it no matter what. And to top it all off, before you kill him, Julius basically tells you that you've become just as bad as the gangs you fought in the previous game, which is why he left the gang in the first place. Oh, and if you didn't do that, you throw a random bartender into gunfire and blow her corpse up to escape a SWAT team.
    • Julius arguably crossed the Moral Event Horizon as well when he blew up the boat that Boss was on, putting him/her in a coma for five years, after all that he/she did to save him. Troy asked for Julius to dismantle the Saints peacefully, but Julius took the violent way out without even a second thought.
      • It was the only way, so he argues. Considering the actions Boss gets up to in the sequel, not to mention the fact that they were a vigilante gang of sorts originally, he was dead on the money.
      • Considering how the Boss is characterized in 2, Julius was entirely justified in his actions. He was terrified that he/she (the Boss) was becoming a monster, and worse, a monster who (running parallel with the origin of the Vice Kings) would probably take control of the Saints from Julius, and thus have the entire city.
      • Ironically, Julius seems to have CAUSED the Boss' increased sociopathy. Being in a coma for years at the hands of your beloved mentor can do that. The Boss might have been turning into a monster, but by attempting to kill him, Julius assured that he would be a monster who stood against everything he fought for. And, as pointed out somewhere, there's the fact that he didn't seem to feel that way until after he got arrested...
    • Dex in the second game also counts, as he decides to try and do both of them in.
    • Shogo Akuji crosses the Moral Event Horizon in the second game. Initially presented as a spoiled brat, Shogo wants to show his father that he can handle Boss after the Saints robbed his casino. He first orders Jyunichi to kidnap Aisha - who winds up killing her when she tries to warn Johnny and Boss. To make things worse, just to save face, he betrays Jyunichi in a fit of pique and tries to personally kill Boss and Gat at Aisha's funeral. He fails, and winds up being buried alive by Johnny and the Boss.
      • Likewise. Everything after "Deal with the Saints" was left up to Jyunichi, and Shogo only betrayed him to the Saints after his father all but removed Shogo from power and placed himself at the head of the Ronin with Jyunichi as his right hand.
    • The Brotherhood's crossing of the horizon is an interesting case. They kidnap Carlos, and chain him to the back of one of their trucks and drag him across town, face-first, which definitely gives you motivation to wipe them out. However, it's the main character who drew first blood by putting radioactive waste in Maero's tattoo and making him Two-Faced. Had he not pulled that little stunt, this could have never happened. Granted, Maero's offer was a terrible, terrible deal for the Saints, but still... Oh, and you avenge Carlos by kidnapping Jessica and locking her in the trunk of her car, driving the car to a monster truck rally that Maero is participating in, and park the car so that he unknowingly crushes his beloved girlfriend by landing on the trunk after a jump. And if that wasn't enough, the Boss shows up as soon as Maero gets out and tosses him Jessica's keys so that he can open the trunk and see her mangled corpse for himself, all while sneering "When you look in the trunk, just remember that you should have offered me more than 20 percent."
      • Of course, that bit with Jessica may possibly be excused on the ground of it being fucking awesome revenge. Not to mention that Jessica is just as much of a psychotic bitch as the Boss is, considering how smug and cheery she is about Carlos being dragged around on the end of a chain by a speeding truck with his face to the pavement.
      • Boss cripples a tattoo artist's hand with fireworks, ruining his livelihood as a scrimshaw and a musician, even though he isn't involved with the Brotherhood in any way save being a scrimshaw. He even explicitly says that Maero doesn't tell him anything because he doesn't want his best friend to get mixed up in gang violence.
    • And so we have one from each gang there's DJ Veteran Child from the Sons of Samedi. He was already a talented, award-winning DJ, but because he he wanted some good weed, he became one of the top members of the gang. He didn't seem all that violent initially (even confused), but was more than willing to remorselessly abuse and kill his ex-girlfriend, Shaundi as well as the Boss so he can save his own neck, or as Shaundi so succinctly puts it after Boss kills him.

Shaundi My Ex-Boyfriend's a dick.

    • In the first game, William Sharp, the uncle of Westside Rollerz leader Joseph Price and the implied brains behind the gang, crosses the Horizon when he kidnaps and murders Lin in front of not only you but Donny, a Rollerz member who considered her his girlfriend (even if she didn't return the affection). Luckily, you teach him a lesson he'll never forget almost immediately afterward.
  • Motive Decay: The Vice Kings started out as a vigilante team formed to fight back against the atrocities Los Carnales inflicted upon their neighborhood and slowly started down the slippery slope to what they become in the game. EXACTLY like what happens to the Saints. And to make matters even worse, YOU are the main cause of that decay.
    • It's a bit more complicated than that. Julius saw that you would become that, and had the bomb on the boat in an effort to prevent it. Arguably, though, that action destroys the Saints, causing the Boss to rebuild them as he sees fit, leaving Julius to be Hoist by His Own Petard.
    • By the time Saints Row 2 comes to pass, it's an aversion: the Boss knows why he wants the Saints back, and it isn't for much of anything nice. You can't decay good will that isn't there.
  • Narm Charm: Most of the Boss' actions in the second game are so over-the-top you shouldn't be able to take them seriously, but they are also so unflinchingly brutal that they manage to be effective nonetheless.
  • Never Live It Down: Johnny's death, and other Saints that have died even when Boss had nothing to do with it are laid at his\her feet a lot.
  • Player Punch: In the original, Lin's execution during the Rollerz arc. In the sequel, Aisha's murder during the Ronin arc, especially if you played the first one. The little... game... the Brotherhood plays with Carlos during their arc. Veteran Child taking Shaundi hostage during the Samedi arc. This game loves cleaning the player's clock.
  • Rated "M" for Money: "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol." It's not really a game meant for kids.
  • Tear Jerker: Having to mercy kill poor Carlos...
    • Lin's death in the first game is a rather strong one, too.
    • Jessica requesting Sister Christian for her and Maero on the radio, seeing as how you kill them both.
    • Shaundi's possible death and aftermath.

YMMV Tropes exclusive to Saints Row 2

  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • Shogo Akuji - an idiot psychopath gang leader whose father has to come in and clean up his mess, or "Well Done, Son" Guy who wants his father's respect in his own way? Even his attack on Gat and the Boss at Aisha's funeral was only after he crossed an apparent Despair Event Horizon when his father not only mourned the death of the man who basically replaced Shogo as a son to him, but mourned because it left him with no one but Shogo to call family.
    • Dane Vogel, CEO of The Ultor Corporation - Corrupt Corporate Executive or Well-Intentioned Extremist? His Evil Plan was to arm the various ultra-violent gangs of Stillwater and sucker them into killing each other off. Then he could move in and turn the Wretched Hive into someplace people would actually want to live, making millions in real estate.
    • The Boss - An incredibly Badass Heroic Sociopath who truly cares about his/her friends and would risk his/her life for them, or a cruel, just plain sociopathic, borderline Complete Monster? Fan reactions are varied.
    • The Saints - The Saints as a gang were started to protect Saints Row from the waging gang war. Many debate whether they are still true to such ideals however.
      • By the second game, they've more or less crossed the Moral Event Horizon and became just as bad (if not worse) than the gangs they war against - pushing drugs, killing cops, pimping hos and taking over neighborhoods. To put it in the Boss' words: "This is our city; We can do whatever the fuck we want."
      • They were already doing those things in the first game—saving the city doesn't come free or easy.
        • The irony is, THEY'RE STILL BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE.
        • Is it better? Ultor, while focusing on making money would have ultimately created a nice (if expensive) place to live. Whereas with the Saints... Their founder Julius was disgusted with the saints in the second game: "The Saints didn't solve a goddamned thing. All we did is become Vice Kings who wore purple."
        • Listen to the ads for Ultor products on the radio sometime—real estate dangerously close to a nuclear power plant which makes Chernobyl look safe by comparison, medication for night terrors with a terrifying list of side effects including night terrors, and treatment for unruly children that can render them permanently mute. Not to mention what they pull in the DLC or in Red Faction—Stillwater under Ultor would have only have seemed like a nice place on the surface, while being an absolute nightmare if you dig deeper.
        • A little bit of Fridge Horror on that point. The Third reveals that after the events in 2, the Saints and Ultor have merged to become the Saints-Ultor Media Group. It's not hard to imagine the Saints eventually dying off or shedding their image, just becoming Ultor. In other words, maybe the reason why Ultor is such a bastard organization in Red Faction is because they used to be a criminal organization.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Yes, some of Boss's actions in the sequel are pretty bad, but like the rest of the game, they're so over the top you can't help but laugh and/or cheer.
  • Dude, Not Funny: A number of fans were not amused by the Boss's increased sociopathy.
  • Game Breaker: It's very easy to get a Bear, an armored vehicle with mounted minigun, early in the game, and mod it for extra durability and speed. This becomes an infinity+ 1 ride for the many situations it's available in.
  • Growing the Beard: The first game was an ultra-narmy ripoff of GTA San Andreas. The second game, while it still bites close to Rockstar's work, has much better gameplay (think San Andreas 2.0, compared to GTAIV's realism) and a very creative flow to its side missions, and watching your player character change from a generic avatar to an over-the-top Heroic Sociopath is very engaging.
  • He's Just Hiding: Some fans needed a lot of convincing that Aisha really did get decapitated.
    • Despite the fact that they even left in a brief view of her headless body.
    • The same can be said for Julius.
    • Lin as well.
    • Even Shogo and his father. The latter vows revenge despite being impaled on a boat before it explodes and the former is buried alive.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: This is Ultor's logo in Saints Row 2. This is Wal-Mart's new-style logo released a year after the game came out.
    • After you kill Veteran Child, Gen X gets bought out by Ultor and turned into Ultor FM.
      • This line when a caller says he wants her to pick a song for the friends he hates:

Ultor FM DJ: "Maybe your friends would want you to fall in a Hole in the Earth."

Caller: "Uhh, what?"

  • Nightmare Fuel - One of the villains is killed via Texas Funeral, AKA being buried alive. No matter what this villain did (more specifically, what he ordered be done), it's still unsettling.
    • Especially when Johnny later remarks with something along the lines of "You think he's still screaming?" I love Johnny, I do, but... * shudder*
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: The first was noted for being a total GTA clone. Yet the second game got praised for doing it well, and taking some of the elements Up to Eleven.
  • Shipper on Deck: A random female pedestrian admits to shipping Shaundi/Aisha and saying "They're going to be together forever!"
    • And The Boss sometimes makes comments implying they ship Pierce and Shaundi.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: Julius. It's a wonder Boss didn't overload the power plant a nuke Stillwater for the lulz, did Troy really expect him not to be killed if he tried to convince his protege to stop?
    • Given the Boss just shrugged and let Troy off for being the mole, it seems it was the fact that Julius PERSONALLY betrayed him that offends the Boss.
      • Or with the fact that Troy made up for this by keeping Boss on life support for 5 years and stopping the prison guards from regulary beating up Johnny.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Although SR1 got mostly decent reviews, it was generally regarded as "just another GTA clone", with an overall reception split between "This is a cheap GTA ripoff" and "This is a cheap GTA ripoff... but they made some improvements and it's actually not that bad." in contrast, the sequel has gained almost universal critical acclaim (Yahtzee ADORES AND LOVES it) and been regarded as not only far better than the original, but also a worthy rival to the GTA series by many.
  • That One Mission: Salting the Earth... Again from the Ultor side. You have to drive a car to a dock to pick up a boat to drive it to a yacht. Not too difficult? Once you get in the boat (which is a little speedboat), Ultor sends an attack helicopter with homing missiles after you. There's no way to make it through there and you just have to get lucky and hope his missiles miss, which is very unlikely. Sometimes, the copter will send the missiles early to taunt you.
    • Worse when you die anywhere in the mission, it sends you back to the Saints Hideout, meaning you have to start EVERYTHING again.
    • Though it get's easier if you go on land again after manning the boat and shoot down the helicopter, before racing to the yacht.
  • That One Sidequest: Three words: Blue Collar Achievement. For example, three more words: Tow Truck Diversion. Between the clunky, all-over-the-place steering, the time limit, the inability to fix your truck (the message "You can't visit here right now" when you try to go to Rim Jobs might as well be an image of a middle finger), and the fact that it doesn't save your progress (you blew up at Level 9? Tough shit! Back to start!) it's easily the most hated part of Saints 2, hell, maybe even the whole series. Though it is doable, just time consuming and very tedious.
    • Heli Assault Level 6 has you flying a helicopter to defend a van through tightly packed skyscrapers and mazes of highways. The most annoying part is that bumping into something usually sends your helicopter bouncing off in the opposite direction at top speed, which usually means you're going to hit something else. Also, your rocket launchers can get knocked off, and the machine gun is nowhere near as effective. Last but not least, somehow, the rival gangs you are up against also has attack choppers, and you have no idea where they will come from until a missile just struck your tail. What's worse, you can only survive three hits max. There's at least three of them in level 6 (though granted, one of them concentrates only on the car).
    • Nuclear Plant Mayhem levels 4-6. Those are sidequests you'd seriously want to tear your hair off, specially if playing under 'Hardcore' difficulty.
    • The Drug Dealing levels from 5 onwards are practically luck based.
    • Escort, in which you drive two people (who are having sex in the back seat) around the city while avoiding newsvans, their significant others, and private investigators, is one of the most loathed activities in the series. 1: The damned newsvans are inexplicably fast, come at you in numbers, and just torment you to no end. 2: Your clients will give you requests that range from killing targets, causing damage to other cars with your vehicle, and even driving halfway across the city to... the XXX theater, or some goddamned thing. All while you're trying to avoid those fucking news vans. 3: When they're not making sex noises, your clients won't stop whining at you. 4: It doesn't even make sense. If they're so damned worried about ending up on the news, why the fuck are they screwing in the backseat of a car that they're making drive all around the damn city?! If it sounds extremely frustrating and stupid, that's because it is.
  • What an Idiot!: All Maero had to do was be a little more polite and argue his case a little better, and an entire third of the game could have been avoided, including some truly ugly deaths. And, the funny thing is, if you play the other two gang stories first, you're actually larger than his gang. Its like a lizard making a deal with a crocodile to catch a chicken, and offering a wing in return.
    • Speaking of deals, there is Shogo's giving Jyunichi's position away to the Saints, arguably his gang's most capable man. I get it, he wanted to prove he could lead the gang/show his father he was a man. He attempts to pull a Uriah Gambit that ends up failing spectacularly and cripples The Ronin past the point of no return, or at least gives them a big push in that direction. Way to go, Shogo you idiot.



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