All for Freedom, and for Pleasure - Let's Play Saints Row 1 and 2

The Saints are back! … kinda. Playa’s alive and kicking, and now Gat’s escaped death row. But the old gang’s long gone, and even our old stomping grounds have been cleaned and sanitized by Ultor. If we want to get anywhere, we’ll need a new base of operations in Stilwater. And it turns out, Johnny might have an idea of where to set up.

The Saints have been gone for a while now, and Stilwater has long left them behind. If Playa wants to get the gang back in action, it would probably be a good idea to drive around the city and see what’s happened in their absence.

Playa’s back, Gat’s back, and now we know the lay of the land. But the competition’s still too strong, and considering we don’t even have enough people for corpse-cleaning duty, we won’t stand a chance if we try to start a gang war now. So what else can we do but drive around recruiting people for a bit?

The Brotherhood wants to cut a deal with the Saints? Well, how nice! Finally, a gang that’s perfectly reasonable! Or maybe we’re jumping the gun, because we haven’t actually met the leader yet. SO what kind of man is Maero, anyway?

Well, the Brotherhood deal went through on account of Maero being a prick. The Saints need money and a better foot in the door, so our best option seems to be robbing the local casino, held by the Ronin. Robbing a casino and then laundering the money should be easy enough, right?

The Saints have hit two of the three gangs, so why stop before everybody knows what we’re made of? The Samedi are the new drug lords in town, and while they may not have the history the Colombians have, they’re threatening enough for the moment. So, once again, our best option to oust the current drug market is to steal what they’re doing and kill them until we’re the ones doing it better!

Well, the Boss is pretty well re-established in Stilwater. Now, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: petty revenge! We can personally attack Maero later, though. Our first target is the guy who survived the first game with no personal repercussions.

Replicating Loa Dust is more difficult than initially expected. If we want to make it properly, we’ll need an expert. The bad news is that said expert is in prison. But if we broke out of prison once, surely we can break in again.

Things have been going well for the Saints lately, but we just haven’t had a lot of Boss-time since getting started. So why not spend some time with Gat and Aisha? After all, if any Ronin show up, Johnny isn’t against mixing business (murder) with pleasure (also murder.)

Gat’s been put in the hospital, but he still fared better than Aisha. With such a terrible tragedy on the Saints’ shoulders, there’s really only one thing to do now: tear the other two gangs apart while we wait for news on the Ronin.

Well, the rampage has been going well, so I see no reason not to continue with it! Today, we’ll see what the boss can do about the Brotherhood’s protection racket.

Things have gone from bad to worse for the Saints, but the Boss in distress doesn’t look that much different from her normal attitude, so there’s still plenty of destruction to go around. The only question now is, which gang is going to try and make a move against the Saints, and how badly is this going to go for them?

The Boss has bounced back after her run of bad luck, and now it’s time to capitalize on the only gang we haven’t reached a standstill with: that’s right, it’s time to kick the Samedi a few more times! After all, if we’ve already got Loa Dust figured out, all that’s left to do is blow up a few factories.

You know who we haven’t enacted enough vengeance upon? The Ronin. They still hold a lot of territory, and today the Boss makes sure that’s no longer the case. And with any luck, maybe today’s the day Kazuo Akuji will arrive in America, and we can politely meet him at the airport. And by that I mean we’ll kill him, of course.

The Samedi’s business is unraveling rapidly at this rate, and even its main players are feeling the pressure. But they’re not done yet, so today we’ll be taking down another lab and another delivery route.

It seems Mr. Sunshine isn’t taking our repeated transgressions well, and has decided to sic the homeless on us. But while we take care of the Samedi, it seems someone with a chip on their shoulder wants Jyunichi of the Ronin out of the way.

The Samedi’s last plan backfired big time, and now the Saints know where Mr. Sunshine is hiding. All that’s left to do is knock out a few more Samedi strongholds to make sure they’re hurting, and then we can go put a bullet in the gang’s most important Lieutenant. Or maybe two bullets? Three? Eh, guns have a bunch of them anyway, he’ll probably die at some point if we fire enough.

After the death of Carlos, the Brotherhood has continued on like they already own the city. But their mysterious shipment still hasn’t arrived, and by sheer coincidence Shaundi has run into, (and was almost run over by,) the perfect opportunity for revenge while the rival gang tries to finalize their plans.

Well, we’ve certainly managed an excellent comeback. The Samedi are keeping their distance after the decapitation of Mr. Sunshine, and Maero is probably still reeling after the death and debilitating injury of his girlfriend and best friend respectively. So since we’ve got a minute, this seems like a good time to go tell Johnny Gat about everything good that’s happened to us recently! And who knows, maybe he’ll also be back on his feet before too long.

So it seems Maero may be a little angry about what we did to his friends. The Brotherhood is on the mood, and they’re breaking anything they can to prove a point. Thankfully, they’re just as shoot-able as they’ve always been, so removing Stilwater’s latest vandal problem shouldn’t be an issue.