TL;DR – A sequel that looks stunning and full of quality-of-life improvements that unfortunately ends up feeling like a hollow shell of what came before.  

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Payday 3 Review –

If you check my most played games on Steam, you will discover that Payday 2 is in my top 5. Me and my friends played every aspect of the game, being able to stealth that first bank on the hardest difficulty as a warmup for the session. There were these moments of joy when we summited Everest in that damned politician’s office overlooking Capitol Hill. There were attempts to make Payday 3 multiple times over the years, but when it finally dropped, I got the gang back together for a heist or two.         

So to set the scene, your long, enjoyable retirement has been ripped out from underneath you as a mysterious force simultaneously targets you and all your old heisters in a targeted hit. Thankfully, Slade (Kosha Engler) saw it coming and was able to reach out and save Dallas (Simon Kerr), Chains (Damion Poitier), Hoxton (Pete Gold), Joy (Siu-see Hung), Pearl (Rebecca LaChance), and Wolf (Nicklas Berglund). All of their supplies have been lost, and their bank accounts have been frozen. But to survive, they need to start getting money and supplies, so it is time to start looting a new city and saying hello to New York.

Now, I think I will be a touch negative in this review, but I want to clarify that some of the changes they have made to Payday have been significant improvements. First, graphically, this is a stunning jump up from where we have come before. They use the Unreal Engine 4 to make a world that feels lived in rather than the almost lifeless voids of the last games. I liked the extra functionality that exists before you put on the mask and that sometimes, if you get caught, you just get escorted out, which is an extra touch of realism to the game. While we are on that front, the new safe and lock box picking mechanics were a welcome addition.

However, while there were some clear improvements to the gameplay, all the gunplay felt as strong as ever. Some aspects of the game felt like missed opportunities, and some just needed more work. To begin with, it was just a struggle to start the game. The different sign-ups and log-ins took multiple tries to get synched up across all four people. The game was also full of bugs in the back end that led to numerous hard resets, which is more annoying as rejoining a game in progress does not work well.

While connection problems were an issue, it all went awry by the time we got into the game and played that first map. You felt that feeling as to what makes this game so much fun come into view. But alas, that feeling was fleeting. The levelling-up system felt hollow and indecipherable. Some of my friends have worked out how to get the skill tree to do what you want, but I am not one of those. Many of the skills wrap around getting Edge, Rush, or Grit, but these don’t map well with the type of game they are working with. The grind is everywhere.

Then, there is the game that we are presented with. I knew I came from Payday 2, which has years of content. However, it did feel like I was paying full price for something that ended up just being a prologue. I think there was only one map that gave us the desire to retry it until we could do it silently, and that was kind of fun, but there was not the sticking power of what came before. When we worked our way to the end, there was a question about whether we wanted to tackle any of the maps again, and the answer was no.

In the end, do we recommend Payday 3? There is a nugget of a good idea here, but it never coalesces into something that makes you want to keep grinding through all its issues. If you have never played any of the Payday games before and are picking this up on Game Pass, then 100% give it a go with friends. However, if you don’t fall into that group, I am not sure it has the sticking power worth its price at the moment. If you liked Payday 3, we would recommend to you Deep Rock Galactic.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you played Payday 3?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the staff of Payday 3
Game Director – Erik Wonnevi
Creative Director – Leif Westerholm
Animation Lead – Joakim Fridlund
Art Director – Daniel Perez
Narrative Lead – Tobias Bodlund
Music – Gustavo Coutinho
Voice Cast – Kosha Engler, Simon Kerr, Damion Poitier, Pete Gold, Siu-see Hung, Rebecca LaChance, Nicklas Berglund, Osy Ikhile, Jelena Gavrilović, Nathan Osgood, Ice-T, Elizabeth Chan, Ilia Volvok, Dash Mihok, Harriet Hare, Rosa Escoda, Chris Jarman, Eric Loren, Shai Matheson & Katherine Fenton with Derek Hagan, Henery Garett, Michael Bodie, Jason Keller, Stefan Ashton Frank, Dar Dash, Ryan Forde Iosco, Joseph May, Sam Fink, Jill Winternitz, Doug Cockle, Ronan Summers,
Developer – Starbreeze Studios
Publisher – Deep Silver