For the record: I am a huge fan of the old Saint's Row games (SR3, SR4, Gat out of Hell) so I am coming at this from the point-of-view of a fangirl. Despite initially wanting to give it a try, I mostly ignored this game when it released because of the negative press and reviews that the game received. I really wish now that I would have tried it for myself at that time.
In short, I really liked this edition of game! While this isn't the legacy cast of characters that we came to love from the previous games, the new characters were great. I liked all of them and I would put them up against any of the characters from the previous game (well, with the possible exception of Johnny Gat :!) Seeing the genesis of the Saints in a new town was an awesome experience and it felt thematically as good as the previous games.
This version of the game followed the familiar pattern: do missions to unlock activities across the city sectors so that you can expand your influence. All the familiar beats are here: the humor was awesome, the situations are comical, and the action is borderline slapstick. All of the irreverent, crude, and violent methods are here, from the action to the dialog.
While I would say that your experience is going to boil down to how much you like the in-game activities (and whomever decided to bring the bletcherous insurance-fraud missions from the previous games should be banned from ever working on a SR game! -- I kid. The fraud missions are tolerable, but just not my cup-of-tea :)
The DLCs for the game were also really well done. The RP DLC being notably great in that group. The Island DLC, not-so-much. I am sorry that the reception of the game was so negative and that as a result, we won't get any more DLC, bug fixes or (maybe) any further SR games since Volition closed it's doors.
My only real criticism of the game would be that there is a little jank in movement of the character, but even the previous versions of SR had some level of jank and it didn't really affect how great those games were. I think just a few minor bug-fixes and adjustments would have made the experience so much better.
So, would I recommend this game? If you are a fan of earlier SR games, I would absolutely recommend this one. The SR DNA is strong with this version, even if the original characters aren't here. If you like big open worlds with lots of zany, over-the-top things to do, then I think you will enjoy it also.
