It’s like a cleaner version of Saints Row: The Third when it comes to gameplay and content.

Definitely a bit different, but it still has the glorious violence and cartoonish humor. It’s pretty lacking in the sex humor, though. No gimp suit or dildo bat from my first pass. That being retired, along with Genki Bowl, isn’t inherently bad, but locking a murder-bowl activity behind DLC is a bit scuzzy.

To address this...

Some of the folks giving this a negative review are fans disappointed we didn’t get a follow-up to Saints Row: Gat out of Hell. I sympathize. I would’ve really liked to see an SR5 time-traveling adventure, but that just wasn’t in the cards, disappointing as that is.

Here are the main things that bring the game down for me as an SR fan:

The characters fail to break out of their archetypes.
In Saints Row 2, Gat, Shaundi, and Pierce mattered. Carlos and his sacrifice mattered. Gwen, Neena, and Kev needed stronger connections to the gangs they represent. Also, Eli probably needed more of a hook than “a dude who read a self-help book.”
The dialogue is very millennial.
This doesn’t really bother me personally. I can chuckle at crappy sitcom humor, and my tolerance for questionable writing is pretty high. I had the same issue with Saints Row: The Third when it came out. The writing feels very targeted toward people in their late 20s and early 30s, which might work better if the audience wasn’t longtime Saints Row fans with very different expectations.
Minor to major technical glitches.
They’ve made the game way better over the year-plus since release, but minor glitches are still expected. I haven’t experienced anything game-breaking myself, but it’s well documented online.

To me, it’s not bad, in the same way you can drudge through the parts you don’t like in an annual Assassin's Creed release.

The other group upset about the game are weird Gamergate-adjacent dudes pedojacketing NPCs and claiming the game “caused someone to die” or is “woke.” One person I watched said the lack of a boob slider was an affront to the franchise, which I hesitantly file under changing modern sensibilities. I remember SR3 getting hated on at launch on the Volition forums because of the wild turn toward absurdity.

This reboot actually feels closer to SR2 in how it approaches the series tone, and that’s fine, but it’s definitely more subdued in its character development.

So yeah, perfect for $20–30.