Saints Row: The Third

Saints Row: The Third picks up three years after its predecessor, with the Third Street Saints no longer just a criminal gang but a full media empire complete with merchandising and energy drinks, before a bank heist gone wrong drags them into a war with a much larger criminal syndicate in the fictional city of Steelport. This review sample confirms the game's reputation as the series' comedic high point, while surfacing a specific, well-documented technical problem worth understanding before buying.

Writing and customization reviewers consistently rank as the series' best

The praise here is specific and enthusiastic. "The only game on the market that lets you bludgeon a couple of furries to death with a twelve-inch dildo," one detailed pros-and-cons review opens, before listing "exceptionally funny," "great voice acting," and a "likable cast of characters" among its strengths. A separate reviewer describes deliberately slowing their own playthrough down to savor the story, taking on five or six side quests between each main mission specifically to extend the experience. Character, vehicle, and weapon customization draw their own specific praise throughout, with reviewers describing genuine personal investment in building out their version of the Saints' boss beyond what the core missions require, from cosmetic outfits down to the performance tuning of individual vehicles.

A specific, well-documented dead-server bug

Set against that praise, a concrete technical problem recurs across multiple independent reviews. "As of April 20, 2021, there's a critical bug with the game," one reviewer writes. "Because it tries to connect to dead servers, even the opening cinematic and main menu will be laggy and stuttering," pointing to a community-made "Lag/Stutter Fix" guide as the only known workaround. A separate reviewer confirms the same root cause more casually: "the game crashes due to old online services they have not removed from the PC version." That's a specific, reproducible, and well-corroborated issue distinct from general optimization complaints, and applying the community fix appears to be a practical necessity rather than an optional tweak for many players, particularly on newer hardware where the game would otherwise be expected to run flawlessly.

An achievement locked behind dead servers

One further, oddly specific technical footnote is worth including for completionists: one achievement in this game requires uploading a custom character to the game's original online servers, which were shut down years ago, making the achievement impossible to earn through normal means. A reviewer notes a community-made mod exists to emulate the shut-down service specifically to unlock this one achievement, a workaround worth knowing about directly for anyone chasing full completion rather than discovering the dead-end through trial and error.

A regional censorship issue, and a case for buying this over the remaster

Two further, more specific findings are worth passing along directly. Historically, Australia and Germany received a "low violence" version of the game due to regional content restrictions, which one detailed reviewer specifically warns is incompatible with save files from the uncensored version — worth checking directly if you're in an affected region. Separately, and more unusually, several reviewers explicitly recommend buying this original release over its newer remaster: "DO NOT PURCHASE THE REMASTERED VERSION OF THE GAME, THIS ONE IS JUST AS GOOD," one writes, listing specific character-model complaints about the remaster before noting its exclusivity to a different storefront at a considerably higher price. That's a genuinely useful piece of comparative buying advice worth passing along directly.

What the completion data confirms

This listing's achievement schema uses readable, thematically named entries, and the resulting curve confirms a widely accessible early game followed by a steep drop toward full completion. Early story achievements sit at 87-90% of the tracked playerbase, but that falls away sharply toward optional activities and side-content achievements, several of which sit around 3-4%. One detailed completionist reviewer captures this pattern directly, describing walking away from several remaining assassinations, car thefts, and side activities specifically because "the diminishing returns" of chasing full completion stopped being worth the tedium — a specific, honest account of exactly where the game's replay value runs out for even dedicated players.

A tonal turning point for the franchise

It's worth situating this game within the wider Saints Row series, since reviewers frequently frame their praise in exactly those terms. This entry marked a deliberate shift away from the grittier, more grounded tone of the first two games toward full embrace of over-the-top absurdist comedy, a change reviewers in this sample overwhelmingly credit as the right call for the series' identity. At least one detailed reviewer specifically laments the direction the eventual sequel, Saints Row IV, and later entries took certain characters, arguing this game represents the peak of a specific creative approach the franchise never quite recaptured afterward — context worth knowing for anyone deciding where to start in the series.

Where it lands

Saints Row: The Third earns its reputation as the series' comedic and tonal peak through genuinely funny writing, strong voice performances, and deep customization that reviewers describe with real affection more than a decade on. The specific, well-documented dead-server stuttering bug is concrete and fixable enough to plan around rather than avoid the game over, and the regional censorship and remaster-pricing details are worth checking directly based on your own location and priorities. At its low asking price, this remains an easy, well-earned recommendation for open-world comedy fans, and one of the rare cases in this catalogue where buying the older, cheaper original is the genuinely better-informed choice.