Saints Row received generally positive reviews upon release, with many critics favorably comparing it to the Grand Theft Auto series.

[1] After completing the first mission, players are then given free roam over the game's open world,[2] the fictional city of Stilwater, which is modeled after Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago.

They can further alter the appearance of their character at clothing stores, tattoo parlors, barbers and jewelers, and tune vehicles at chop shops.

Players may remove their notoriety instantly by utilizing drive-through confessional booths, visiting plastic surgeons,[6] or inputting cheat codes.

Saints Row features an in-game GPS navigation device, which allows players to set waypoints with a directional line indicating the quickest route to the marked destination.

Saints leader Julius Little (Keith David) initiates the player into the gang and has said initiate reclaim the district of Saint's Row, before assigning this new member to work under his top lieutenants, Johnny Gat (Daniel Dae Kim), Dexter "Dex" Jackson (JAQ) and Lin (Tia Carrere), in wiping out each rival gang.

Gat focuses on hitting operations owned by the Vice Kings, including faking the death of their key asset - Gat's girlfriend and famed R&B singer Aisha (Sy Smith) - which culminates in the gang's leader, Benjamin King (Michael Clarke Duncan), being betrayed by his underlings for refusing to respond to the Saints' actions.

Meanwhile, Dex focuses on the Carnales by having the player help the Saints take over their drug operations and ultimately kill their leaders, brothers Hector (Joaquim de Almeida) and Angelo Lopez (Freddy Rodriguez), while also securing a deal with the gang's chief Colombian supplier, Manuel Orejuela (Carlos Ferro).

Concurrently, Lin works undercover amongst the Rollerz, eventually learning that the gang is led by street racer Joseph Price (Gregory Sims) and his uncle, wealthy private attorney William Sharp (David Carradine).

As Hughes orders the player's execution, the yacht explodes, seemingly killing everyone onboard and leading into the events of Saints Row 2.

[7] Earlier unveiling a beta build of a Wii port was handled by Mass Media, Inc.[8][9] The design philosophy behind Saints Row's arcing mission structure was to provide players with more freedom in how they interact with the open world.

[10] During development, the team turned to earlier open world games to establish principles for innovation, adopting the design philosophy "everything matters".

Stockman felt that previous open world games did not reward players for experimenting with the sandbox enough because story progression was siphoned off from free roam gameplay.

Some activities went through larger design changes than others; in an earlier inception of Drug Trafficking, players would have driven around the city providing addicts with narcotics while under the pressure of a time limit.

Concurrently, the team were making refinements to defensive sequences in the story missions, which influenced the final revision of the Drug Trafficking activity.

The team made further revisions during this process as necessary, balancing the number of interior models like shops and mission-related buildings in each district so that no one section of the city would feel denser than another.

Some districts planned for the city, such as an indoor shopping mall, a train station, and a trailer park, were cut during development and were added in Saints Row 2.

[12][13] The soundtrack of Saints Row includes over 130 musical tracks covering the classical, easy listening, drum and bass/breakbeat, metal, reggae, rock, R&B and hip hop genres.

[31] Will Tuttle of GameSpy considered that while not all players would respond positively to the Respect system necessitating mission progression, the Activities "offer some of the game's most memorable sequences".

[24] Scott Sharkey of 1UP.com noted that Saints Row removed frustrating elements from previous Grand Theft Auto games, like load times between city sections and combat reliant on auto-aim, but considered its attempts to recreate urban gang culture and satire "so hackneyed that they cast an embarrassing shadow over the whole thing".

"[28] The Times similarly gave it a full five stars and said, "This is a game guaranteed to offend and entertain in equal measure, but it is emphatically not for children.

"[29] The Sydney Morning Herald gave it four stars out of five and said that the game "lacks the clever subtlety and fun-loving sense of mischief of Grand Theft Auto, with much of its humour falling flat.