For as zany and tongue-in-cheek as the Saints Row series may be, fans are pretty divided in their opinions on it. Many liked the more serious style that the first two titles had, almost emulating Grand Theft Auto with its mob-story antics and focus on grittier crimes. Others feel that the series didn't become interesting until Saints Row: The Third, completely jumping the shark and going all-in on absurdity and comedy. Wherever you stand, last year's port of The Third to Switch was just plain disappointing.
The hope was that any future ports would be better. Announced earlier this year, THQ Nordic is back to Nintendo's platform again with Saints Row IV and the results are definitely better. This isn't the definitive way to play the pseudo-super hero game…as a matter of fact; it's not a particularly great one. But, despite suffering from technical setbacks and some weirdly long load times, IV is a marked improvement on its predecessor.
I'll spare you a drawn-out review on Saints Row IV because the game is nearly a decade old at this point. You've either already played it and love the game or you totally hate the direction developer Volition went in. Personally, I feel Saints Row IV takes the idea of Crackdown and makes it actually enjoyable. Crackdown was fun back in 2007, but the title does not hold up at all. It's very barren, centers too much on pointless collectibles, and lacks much in the way of player agency. Saints Row IV has that and then some.
So if you previously didn't get on with the crazy powers and almost complete genre shift, this new Switch port isn't going to change your mind. This is very much a late-PS3/360 era open-world game, for better or worse. The only additions would be that this belated port comes in the form of the Re-Elected edition, which contains all of the post-launch DLC. There's a fairly substantial amount of content here and the $40 price isn't too bad in isolation.
Where things go wrong is with performance. Much like The Third, Saints Row IV isn't exactly great when it comes to maintaining a consistent framerate. On average, the game feels decent enough to play. If you're coming from those last-generation versions, you might not even mind the dips here and there. Saints Row IV is seemingly using an uncapped framerate, but rarely ever hits anything above 30 FPS. An option to use a dynamic resolution scaler also helps the game avoid total unplayability in tough segments.
Where the problem arises is that when playing docked, this port just does not hold up. Regardless of your setting with the dynamic scaler, Saints Row IV feels really bad in TV mode. You want to keep the resolution static so that you can actually see things, but the framerate drops so hard at times that it feels like you're moving in slow-mo. I timed my presses of buttons and movements of the joystick and would often see between a two or four second delay in reaction.
Portably, however, this port is respectable. We're not talking a night and day difference, but the obviously lower resolution helps Saints Row IV run in a much more consistent manner. Here, the choice between static and dynamic resolution doesn't matter as much since the game performs well enough in either mode. You're better off using the static choice simply because the Switch's small screen can make the dynamic option a little too blurry.
It should also be noted that, visually, this port looks really bad. There is some terrible form of anti-aliasing going on that obscures details to an insane degree. Any random moment is either too dark or littered with low-quality effects, making it hard to appreciate any of the artwork. The bloom is also way out of control, often triggering what looks like local-dimming on the Switch's screen.
At least in terms of control options, THQ Nordic has implemented gyro-controls. The Switch joy-con just do not cut it for Saints Row. With the performance not being perfect and this game relying on aiming quite a bit, trying to get Nintendo's crappy controllers to play nicely is an exercise in frustration. You'll often overshoot targets or find that any precision shots are too difficult to pull off. Switching to gyro helps immensely.
Finally, the online support is fairly decent. I opened a co-op lobby to randoms and played an hour or so with different players. There wasn't any noticeable lag and I was able to move as far away from the other player as I wanted. At least the game nails that well, since co-op is a big part of the Saints Row experience.
It's still hard to make a firm recommendation of this particular version of the game. If you've never played Saints Row IV before and are interested, I'd say wait for a price drop. $40 is a bit steep when the game can be had on PC for less than $10. Portability is a wonderful bonus feature, but not for an extra mark up.
If you have played this before and aren't all that interested in the Switch's portability factor, you'd be silly to spend more money on an inferior version. The PS4 and Xbox One remaster runs the game much better, is significantly cheaper, and includes basically everything else. The PC version is cheaper, still, and can be run at 4K resolution. This Switch version seems more like it is being catered directly to Nintendo owners and only them.
Even still, Saints Row IV is a solid game and still worth digging into. Just know going into this Switch port what you're getting and you may walk away pleased.
A Switch review code for Saints Row IV was provided to TheGamer for this impressions piece. Saints Row IV is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Switch.