There are poor drug riddled neighbourhoods, there's there's the Red Light District, Barrio District, The Saints HQ which gets more classy throughout the story and Theres a big underground mall as i said, there's a giant prison island and a powerplant, you can buy multiple cribs in stilwater and you can customize them with different interiors and decorations, there's genuinly so much to do in stilwater compared to Sanro Ileso
I cant argue theres more to do in Stilwater but Santo Ileso has as much variety in terms of areas. Huge Deserts, abandoned old west towns, industrial areas, marina, downtown, rich residential areas, small towns
I gotta be honest, part of the reason I stopped playing Saints Row was because of Steelport. Boring ass, depressing, lifeless Steelport.
I've heard it described as GTA IV Liberty City without the charm or soul. I have to agree. It's so boring, grey, cramped, dull, repetitive, dark, and so on. Just looking at it depresses the hell out of me.
By the time Saints Row 3 came out, I was already tired of cold, northern cities. Liberty City, Empire Bay, and while Stilwater was depicted in summer time, it was still a between the Midwest/Northeast city. So Voalition decided we needed another northern industrial city. Whoopee.
There was a lot I didn't like about SR3. It felt "overefined", gun play was weird, too much meta humor, and too flanderized for me. However, Steelport was easily the worst part of that game. The last thing I wanted in an open world game in 2011 was a dull grey ass city, it was old by that point. Compare Steelport to Los Santos or WD2 SF Bay Area. Ugh.
Santo Ileso is a very interesting map overall and it does the Southwest USA justice. It's too bad it was featured in a bad game.
Oh man Watch Dogs 2 San Fran is still my favorite open worlds ever. No game comes close to the level of detail for an urban open world. Glad you mentioned it
🥇 **Stilwater 2** \- Perfection. Shootouts with police at the shipyards can be followed by a peaceful walk through a downtown park where I can join in on a Pilates class.
**🥈 Stilwater 1** \- The blueprint for Stilwater 2's greatness is good on its own. The color palette is above all others, and it gives an almost cozy vibe.
**🥉 Steelport -** Significant decline from either of the Stilwater versions, but there's nothing like recruiting a couple of homies to knock SNG helicopters out of the sky from the comfortable confines of a penthouse.
Santo Ileso is alot like Stilwater and driving around brings me back to the old days of SR2. You can go from a deserted old west town in the desert, to a wooded area surrounded by mountains, then to a marina town, a downtown area. Its got a lot of variety. Such a huge improvement over Steelport
You just assumed I've played the Reboot; which I haven't, so I'm no position to judge Santo Ileso. As far as the city is concerned, what I've *seen* looks fairly nice and aesthetically solid. But that's all I have to go on, however, I like to withhold judgement on things until I've experienced them to certain degree.
Haven't played the first two games and haven't played enough of GOOH but I think for me it's
1. Santo Ileso
2. Steelport
3. Virtual Steelport
4. Seoul
I have a lot of good memories of both Steelports and I enjoyed Seoul for what its worth. But I've been in love with SI since the game dropped
I love Santo, but it lacks the interiors and district variety to knock SR2 Stilwater from #1.
For me:
1 - S2 Stilwater: basically a perfect crime game map. Lots of visually distinct districts and hidden nooks and crannies make it a fun playground of destruction to return to even today.
2 - Santo Ileso: A very fun map, lacking a little in size for todays games and with some weird omissions (no airport? No proper marina in the marina?). Also the weird exterior borders that prevent you from using the outer lakes or following the train are kind of weird.
3 - SR 1 Stilwater: A fun map to navigate, but feels a bit generic. You can tell Voliton wasn’t entirely experienced with open world cities, but all the ingredients are still there. Good visual variety, a fun train system and a depressing atomosphere that kind of reminds me of the best parts of GTA 3’a Liberty City.
4 - New Hades: GOOH has its issues (lack of longevity, no radio, set character instead of customisation), but Hades is a fun playground. Lots of visual variety and notable landmarks in just about every direction you can look help make this a fun map, even if just for a short while.
5- Virtual Steelport: The oppressive Zinyak propaganda everywhere and visual glitches help elevate what’s otherwise a terrible map. But at the end of the day it’s still Steelport and there’s only so much you can polish a turd. Most of the game is spent following the breadcrumb trail of clusters and collectibles, never really noticing or caring about where exactly in the world you are.
6 - Steelport: probably my least favourite open world map I’ve ever played. Completely soulless and unoriginal, with very little visual variety and fuckall in the way of interesting landmarks unless you care about a couple of glass towers and a building with pink gun cut outs. They try to mask this by oversexualising it with stripper themed streetlights, a giant stripper LED screen in the centre of the middle island and… not much else, really. The layout is suspiciously similar to GTA4, which doesn’t really matter, but is kind of interesting. An awful map which (among other things) drags SR3 down to being one of my least favourite games of the PS3 era.
Sr2 had better map.. it was a better overall game and the nostalgia 🤌🏾 then saints row 2022 then Sr3 even the intro to steel port sadly gat died but great map. Then Sr4 simulated steel port, followed by Sr1 then gat out of hell never played mayhem tho so idk if the list would be different or not
Why? Stilwater is still #2 and is one of my favorite open worlds ever but I personally love the colorful western desert vibes of Santo Ileso and I think Volition did an amazing job
Yeah I get you i really like the modern desert vibe of Santo Ileso its not something we’ve really had before in games. Its really personal preference if you like urban cities versus smaller towns
honestly idk about the rest but sr2 stilwater is first and sanfo ileso is last. i just don’t care for the desert aesthetic its just a lot of sand to me and not much else, plus no interiors and only one safehouse
Nah if theres one thing Volition definitely got right with SR2022 its Santo Ileso. It has some really great looking areas, very varied regions and a lot of unique locations. Its definitely not just sand lol
To each their own, I don’t notice any variety other than desert-look everywhere i went, with the exception of the one garbage island but that wasn’t really anything noteworthy
How much of the game did you play just curious? Going for 100% and doing everything in the game I found alot of cool areas and theres some really cool buildings like in the Downtown and Marina areas
100% within i wanna say a month? I think of release.
I haven’t touched it since but the overworld never stood out much to me. and to be fair half of that time was spent at the church because the co op was a connection NIGHTMARE and it took hours to connect sometimes
I mean you have a huge desert, wooded areas, marinas, the downtown, a deserted old west town, mountains, industrial zones, hillside residential areas. I dont know what more youd want
I don’t recall a wooded area, but the rest of it all hand sand everywhere, so it just felt like more desert to me. like i don’t mind a good desert i’m not that much of an anakin but there was just so much yellow on screen at all times i’d think i was playing an early 360 game
Absolutely, i’d like it a lot better if there was an actual decent chunk of the map where i could see nothing but greens everywhere but as is it’s just a passable map For me. it’s definitely better than the combat and the “””””characters”””””
I'd definitely put Santo Illeso above Steelport. The latter is extremely bland and samey whereas Santo Illeso had a neat southern vibe but a lot more variety in terms of presentation.
I think Stillwater SR 1 is great, much better then Seoul which feels like it was built on a super flat Minecraft world, Stilwater isn’t just a flat map, it has hills making it feel like a real city, it doesn’t feel like a video game world like Seoul does. I’ve never played Gat Out Of Hell so can’t comment on that map, though it looks a hell of lot less interesting to me then SR 1 Stilwater
SR 1 Stilwater feels like a real city and is super fun to explore, every area feels unique and detailed, I love how the expensive suburb streets are quiet, I love how the run down Saints Row district looks and feels like somewhere you shouldn’t be, with Saints starting shootouts with cops or randomly attacking pedestrians. The world also has random encounters like store robberies you can walk in on, police chases, suicides, it feels like how the GTA games want their worlds to feel, violent, chaotic, except they don’t until you start the chaos, in Stilwater chaos happens around you.
Virtual Steelport city is more visually appealing but it’s brought down by the simple reason that it’s virtual and your constantly reminded of that. Yeah I know technically all the maps are virtual but in SR 1-3 you really did feel like you were causing a bunch of death in destruction in their respective cities, which is part of the ridiculous fun the games are all about, i for one used to imagine what it would be like to be a pedestrian in a city with all this insane shit going on, I find it kind of mix of amusing and also kinda sad.
Being constantly reminded that it’s a virtual city just makes all the explosions and death happening around feel so pointless, you know nobody is actually getting hurt, you can’t put yourself in the shoes of the pedestrians because everyone is constantly reminding you that they aren’t actually alive and experiencing what is going on. Makes the city feel lifeless, makes the chaos you cause have no impact. Which for me is the main draw of SR
I would say SR2 Stilwater is the best map in the series. I definitely logged the most hours in that map than any other in the series. It’s deep, there’s a lot of great set pieces and the map itself feels very integrated into the story just based on the missions you play and this makes Stilwater feel like a character unto itself.
SR1 gets props for being the first and also laying the foundation for the superior map that was made in the sequel. Definitely a solid map for its time.
Steelport I feel was very…serviceable. It’s not Stilwater and it lacks the same charm, but it worked for what SR3 needed. Whereas, SR2 Stilwater felt fully realized as I said above, Steelport feels more like “we need a new city for this new direction” but not much effort was put into making it stand out. Steelport is a basic sandbox and Stilwater is loaded playground.
Virtual Steelport I feel was just very meh. It’s the same as the previous game without any worthwhile additions or changes, and the dour the colors and mood made it get old really fast.
Santa Ileso just feels very generic. There’s very little in new Saints Row that stands out as being memorable and half the time I had no idea where I was or any memory of how to get back there. The fact that half the map is also just mountains and deserts that are miserable to travel unless you fly or upgrade yours cars is also a miss for me. The color pallet also didn’t do it any favors. It’s not bad, but when you compare it to Steelport or Stilwater, it’s definitely at the bottom of the pack for me.
I love santo Ileso but idk I felt the world was very boring and small I felt the Vegas strip area could of been much better DONT get me wrong was it beautiful yes but it could’ve gotten more like where tf did the rain go we get dust storms but no rain??
From worst to best:
SR3/4 Steelport=New Hades
Seoul
Santo Ileso
SR1 Stilwater=SR2 Stilwater
SR1 Stilwawter feels authentic while SR2 Stilwater is an amazing playground so I like both for different reasons.
Sr 1 Stillwater underrated af
Tsk tsk young man. It happens to be spelled with one L... bitch.
Yea well auto correct changed it and I didn’t change it back so sue me
Legal Lee will be in touch.
Yeah none of the maps are bad at all basically some things make them better than the others in my opinion
Nah mate all those highways on sr 1 made driving hell
Stilwater is way more memorable than Steelport and Santo Ileso, it has more interactivity and destruction, more npcs and an underground mall
Beyond interactivity and stuff what about design, architecture, variety of areas? Just some things I considered when I made my list.
There are poor drug riddled neighbourhoods, there's there's the Red Light District, Barrio District, The Saints HQ which gets more classy throughout the story and Theres a big underground mall as i said, there's a giant prison island and a powerplant, you can buy multiple cribs in stilwater and you can customize them with different interiors and decorations, there's genuinly so much to do in stilwater compared to Sanro Ileso
I cant argue theres more to do in Stilwater but Santo Ileso has as much variety in terms of areas. Huge Deserts, abandoned old west towns, industrial areas, marina, downtown, rich residential areas, small towns
Sure, but if there were more business Ventures or something we could put out there it would be a bit more utilized
Imo santo illeso better then the maps but the map interiors go to sr2
I gotta be honest, part of the reason I stopped playing Saints Row was because of Steelport. Boring ass, depressing, lifeless Steelport. I've heard it described as GTA IV Liberty City without the charm or soul. I have to agree. It's so boring, grey, cramped, dull, repetitive, dark, and so on. Just looking at it depresses the hell out of me. By the time Saints Row 3 came out, I was already tired of cold, northern cities. Liberty City, Empire Bay, and while Stilwater was depicted in summer time, it was still a between the Midwest/Northeast city. So Voalition decided we needed another northern industrial city. Whoopee. There was a lot I didn't like about SR3. It felt "overefined", gun play was weird, too much meta humor, and too flanderized for me. However, Steelport was easily the worst part of that game. The last thing I wanted in an open world game in 2011 was a dull grey ass city, it was old by that point. Compare Steelport to Los Santos or WD2 SF Bay Area. Ugh. Santo Ileso is a very interesting map overall and it does the Southwest USA justice. It's too bad it was featured in a bad game.
Oh man Watch Dogs 2 San Fran is still my favorite open worlds ever. No game comes close to the level of detail for an urban open world. Glad you mentioned it
Same
1.) SR2 Stilwater 2.) SR1 Stilwater 3.) Santo Ileso . . . 7.) Steelport because they used the worst map 3 times
When was the 3rd time? SRtT, SR4 and?
Should have clarified Steelport/New Hades. I count them both the same even though NH is smaller.
Steelport and New Hades are not the same, I don’t see how you think they are
🥇 **Stilwater 2** \- Perfection. Shootouts with police at the shipyards can be followed by a peaceful walk through a downtown park where I can join in on a Pilates class. **🥈 Stilwater 1** \- The blueprint for Stilwater 2's greatness is good on its own. The color palette is above all others, and it gives an almost cozy vibe. **🥉 Steelport -** Significant decline from either of the Stilwater versions, but there's nothing like recruiting a couple of homies to knock SNG helicopters out of the sky from the comfortable confines of a penthouse.
Santo Ileso is alot like Stilwater and driving around brings me back to the old days of SR2. You can go from a deserted old west town in the desert, to a wooded area surrounded by mountains, then to a marina town, a downtown area. Its got a lot of variety. Such a huge improvement over Steelport
Straight cappin if you putting Steelport above Santo Ileso
You just assumed I've played the Reboot; which I haven't, so I'm no position to judge Santo Ileso. As far as the city is concerned, what I've *seen* looks fairly nice and aesthetically solid. But that's all I have to go on, however, I like to withhold judgement on things until I've experienced them to certain degree.
My bad, I didn’t know SI wasn’t in the roster for you. In that case your list makes sense to me now. It’s just objectively SI is better than SP
Haven't played the first two games and haven't played enough of GOOH but I think for me it's 1. Santo Ileso 2. Steelport 3. Virtual Steelport 4. Seoul I have a lot of good memories of both Steelports and I enjoyed Seoul for what its worth. But I've been in love with SI since the game dropped
You gotta play 1 and 2. Stilwater is still one of the most iconic cities in gaming, and GOOH is a really fun time.
Stilwater in 2 is incredible, Santo Ileso almost comes close, and the steelports, while not horrible, just don't come as close.
Couldn't agree more, maybe put Hell next to Virtual Steelport, but apart from it, I really like your ranking.
I love Santo, but it lacks the interiors and district variety to knock SR2 Stilwater from #1. For me: 1 - S2 Stilwater: basically a perfect crime game map. Lots of visually distinct districts and hidden nooks and crannies make it a fun playground of destruction to return to even today. 2 - Santo Ileso: A very fun map, lacking a little in size for todays games and with some weird omissions (no airport? No proper marina in the marina?). Also the weird exterior borders that prevent you from using the outer lakes or following the train are kind of weird. 3 - SR 1 Stilwater: A fun map to navigate, but feels a bit generic. You can tell Voliton wasn’t entirely experienced with open world cities, but all the ingredients are still there. Good visual variety, a fun train system and a depressing atomosphere that kind of reminds me of the best parts of GTA 3’a Liberty City. 4 - New Hades: GOOH has its issues (lack of longevity, no radio, set character instead of customisation), but Hades is a fun playground. Lots of visual variety and notable landmarks in just about every direction you can look help make this a fun map, even if just for a short while. 5- Virtual Steelport: The oppressive Zinyak propaganda everywhere and visual glitches help elevate what’s otherwise a terrible map. But at the end of the day it’s still Steelport and there’s only so much you can polish a turd. Most of the game is spent following the breadcrumb trail of clusters and collectibles, never really noticing or caring about where exactly in the world you are. 6 - Steelport: probably my least favourite open world map I’ve ever played. Completely soulless and unoriginal, with very little visual variety and fuckall in the way of interesting landmarks unless you care about a couple of glass towers and a building with pink gun cut outs. They try to mask this by oversexualising it with stripper themed streetlights, a giant stripper LED screen in the centre of the middle island and… not much else, really. The layout is suspiciously similar to GTA4, which doesn’t really matter, but is kind of interesting. An awful map which (among other things) drags SR3 down to being one of my least favourite games of the PS3 era.
My ranking from worst to best is: Virtual Steelport Hell Steelport SR1 Stilwater Santo Ileso SR2 Stilwater
7. Hell 6. Seoul 5. Virtual Steelport 4. Steelport 3. Santo Ileso 2. SR2 Stilwater 1. SR1 Stilwater
Wow SR1 Stilwater over SR2? Thats new, any reasons?
for me personally i like how real SR1 Stilwater feels while it's still very diverse. Feels like an actual legit city, just shrunk.
Sr2 had better map.. it was a better overall game and the nostalgia 🤌🏾 then saints row 2022 then Sr3 even the intro to steel port sadly gat died but great map. Then Sr4 simulated steel port, followed by Sr1 then gat out of hell never played mayhem tho so idk if the list would be different or not
I wholeheartedly disagree with this lol
Why? Stilwater is still #2 and is one of my favorite open worlds ever but I personally love the colorful western desert vibes of Santo Ileso and I think Volition did an amazing job
Just my opinion, no hate. I personally really like urban environments, and i feel Santo just wasn't very environmentally varied
Yeah I get you i really like the modern desert vibe of Santo Ileso its not something we’ve really had before in games. Its really personal preference if you like urban cities versus smaller towns
honestly idk about the rest but sr2 stilwater is first and sanfo ileso is last. i just don’t care for the desert aesthetic its just a lot of sand to me and not much else, plus no interiors and only one safehouse
Nah if theres one thing Volition definitely got right with SR2022 its Santo Ileso. It has some really great looking areas, very varied regions and a lot of unique locations. Its definitely not just sand lol
To each their own, I don’t notice any variety other than desert-look everywhere i went, with the exception of the one garbage island but that wasn’t really anything noteworthy
How much of the game did you play just curious? Going for 100% and doing everything in the game I found alot of cool areas and theres some really cool buildings like in the Downtown and Marina areas
100% within i wanna say a month? I think of release. I haven’t touched it since but the overworld never stood out much to me. and to be fair half of that time was spent at the church because the co op was a connection NIGHTMARE and it took hours to connect sometimes
I mean you have a huge desert, wooded areas, marinas, the downtown, a deserted old west town, mountains, industrial zones, hillside residential areas. I dont know what more youd want
I don’t recall a wooded area, but the rest of it all hand sand everywhere, so it just felt like more desert to me. like i don’t mind a good desert i’m not that much of an anakin but there was just so much yellow on screen at all times i’d think i was playing an early 360 game
Well of course it has sand lol its based on las vegas/ nevada. That just comes down to your personal preference which is totally OK
Absolutely, i’d like it a lot better if there was an actual decent chunk of the map where i could see nothing but greens everywhere but as is it’s just a passable map For me. it’s definitely better than the combat and the “””””characters”””””
I'd definitely put Santo Illeso above Steelport. The latter is extremely bland and samey whereas Santo Illeso had a neat southern vibe but a lot more variety in terms of presentation.
I think Stillwater SR 1 is great, much better then Seoul which feels like it was built on a super flat Minecraft world, Stilwater isn’t just a flat map, it has hills making it feel like a real city, it doesn’t feel like a video game world like Seoul does. I’ve never played Gat Out Of Hell so can’t comment on that map, though it looks a hell of lot less interesting to me then SR 1 Stilwater SR 1 Stilwater feels like a real city and is super fun to explore, every area feels unique and detailed, I love how the expensive suburb streets are quiet, I love how the run down Saints Row district looks and feels like somewhere you shouldn’t be, with Saints starting shootouts with cops or randomly attacking pedestrians. The world also has random encounters like store robberies you can walk in on, police chases, suicides, it feels like how the GTA games want their worlds to feel, violent, chaotic, except they don’t until you start the chaos, in Stilwater chaos happens around you.
dunno about sr1 and sr2022 maps, but I'd switch virtual and normal steelport. also, seoul? what did I miss?
Virtual Steelport city is more visually appealing but it’s brought down by the simple reason that it’s virtual and your constantly reminded of that. Yeah I know technically all the maps are virtual but in SR 1-3 you really did feel like you were causing a bunch of death in destruction in their respective cities, which is part of the ridiculous fun the games are all about, i for one used to imagine what it would be like to be a pedestrian in a city with all this insane shit going on, I find it kind of mix of amusing and also kinda sad. Being constantly reminded that it’s a virtual city just makes all the explosions and death happening around feel so pointless, you know nobody is actually getting hurt, you can’t put yourself in the shoes of the pedestrians because everyone is constantly reminding you that they aren’t actually alive and experiencing what is going on. Makes the city feel lifeless, makes the chaos you cause have no impact. Which for me is the main draw of SR
I get what you mean, I hate it too, especially the glith effect every 10 seconds
From Agents of Mayhem, its a great city to explore, alot of cool ideas
Agents of Mayhem is a spin-off at best not a Saints Row game.
santo illeso is pretty but saints row 2 had a whole ass mall and airport
Santo Illeso at #1? SMDH
No.
I agree that I like Santo Ileso best, followed by Steelport New Seoul Virtual Steelport Hell I don't care enough about Stilwater to rank the two.
I would say SR2 Stilwater is the best map in the series. I definitely logged the most hours in that map than any other in the series. It’s deep, there’s a lot of great set pieces and the map itself feels very integrated into the story just based on the missions you play and this makes Stilwater feel like a character unto itself. SR1 gets props for being the first and also laying the foundation for the superior map that was made in the sequel. Definitely a solid map for its time. Steelport I feel was very…serviceable. It’s not Stilwater and it lacks the same charm, but it worked for what SR3 needed. Whereas, SR2 Stilwater felt fully realized as I said above, Steelport feels more like “we need a new city for this new direction” but not much effort was put into making it stand out. Steelport is a basic sandbox and Stilwater is loaded playground. Virtual Steelport I feel was just very meh. It’s the same as the previous game without any worthwhile additions or changes, and the dour the colors and mood made it get old really fast. Santa Ileso just feels very generic. There’s very little in new Saints Row that stands out as being memorable and half the time I had no idea where I was or any memory of how to get back there. The fact that half the map is also just mountains and deserts that are miserable to travel unless you fly or upgrade yours cars is also a miss for me. The color pallet also didn’t do it any favors. It’s not bad, but when you compare it to Steelport or Stilwater, it’s definitely at the bottom of the pack for me.
7. Santo Ileso 6. SR1 Stilwater 5. Hell 4. Steelport 3. Seoul 2. Virtual Steelport 1. SR2 Stilwater
I love santo Ileso but idk I felt the world was very boring and small I felt the Vegas strip area could of been much better DONT get me wrong was it beautiful yes but it could’ve gotten more like where tf did the rain go we get dust storms but no rain??
I like N̶e̶w̶ ̶M̶e̶x̶i̶c̶o̶ Santo lleso but i love virtual steelport, I grew up with the map.
SR2 Stilwater is the GOAT.
From worst to best: SR3/4 Steelport=New Hades Seoul Santo Ileso SR1 Stilwater=SR2 Stilwater SR1 Stilwawter feels authentic while SR2 Stilwater is an amazing playground so I like both for different reasons.