Of all Saints Row to date, this easily as to be the best of the bunch. Not even sure where to begin there's so much to this title. The entire idea of Saints Row is a lighter and less serious version of Grand Theft Auto... but "less serious" can also be taken as "insane fun" and "outlandishly hilarious". ;)
PC VERSION ALERT: If playing on PC, the "Gentlemen of the Row" mod is a MUST-HAVE mod-collection!!! :D
For starters, the storyline goes all in and throws most all caution to the wind (even though the censor blurs when streaking are annoying as &$!%, even with the "censor bypass" patch). You awaken, recovered from the events of the first Saints Row (that many still were never able to experience, since to this day, it's still EXCLUSIVE-LOCKED to the ORIGINAL XBOX... WTF!?), to find the original Saints have been decimated and you have to start from scratch, building your empire from the ground up, all over again!
The tutorial-level has you bust out of prison with the help of somebody that later becomes a Saints sidekick of sorts. The story from there plunges straight in, with the newly formed Saints battling three other factions, four if you count Ultor (sort of a weird love/hate relationship here). Each faction has their own unique story-lines too... making the game that much deeper, and even better, being open-world sandbox, you get to choose which faction storyline you want to go at, at your own pace. So for example, if you do three Sons of Samedi story-quests and decide you want to take a break on the SoS, you can then decide to go after The Brotherhood or The Ronin for awhile instead. Or if you want a break from the story, there's tons of side diversions you can partake in, from insurance-fraud to streaking to pimping, etc.
WARNING: The Brotherhood story-line gets pretty grim right at the get go, and to this day, I still have a hard time replaying it as it really cuts deep in a way.
There's also tons of customization... you can customize your character, the leader of The Saints, from the ground up in your own image, male, female, etc... sky's the limit (especially with "Gentlemen of the Row" mod!). There's also a lot of unlockables, as well as unlockable music soundtracks which is a really neat touch... it really spices up the different radio-stations, which are already pretty decent even straight out of the box. You can also customize every vehicle you find in the game, with plenty of garage space to collect everything (including aerial and water vehicles), even with duplicate vehicles (come the end of the game it can even be a bit cumbersome flipping through all of your vehicles). There's also several different safehouses that you can customize (the main Saints hideout, an old hotel, accessible through the basement of a mission-house, is mind-blowing awesome with lots of upgrades) to your own tastes, as well as the ability to customize your gang-style, theme, stances, taunts, etc.
The game also has the option for drop-in/drop-out co-op for easy multi-player with friends! ^_^
Saints Row 2 is where the three iconic Saints characters start from, including Pierce, Shaundi, and last but not least, JOHNNY GAT! (Not to spoil the fact Carlos doesn't carry on with them... -_-)
Even today (June 2017), the game still has tons of replayability... which is sadly more than can be said for the future chapters of The Saints, even thought Saints Row IV wasn't all too bad.
Saints Row 2 is still one of my most favorite games of all times, even today... definitely worth checking out if you never got around to it before! (Eat your heart out GTA! xD)
** NOTE: Due to issues in other areas/websites, have client-side disabled viewing comments via custom user-script; therefore won't be viewing/reading/responding to comments on this review.