Payday 3

Despite a few regressive design choices, Payday 3 largely manages to deliver a rejuvenated experience with best-in-class combat, improved stealth mechanics, and an excellent social atmosphere with friends. Starbreeze Studios hasn’t emptied its vault of tricks just yet.

Payday 3 is a good game right now, with great heists that are fun to play no matter the direction you take, though the overhaul to stealth gameplay steals the spotlight more than anything. How it launched was however unacceptable, and further highlighted the issues prevalent with games that require you to always be online. It also doesn't help itself by not providing a well-thought out experience for an online game. Due to that online nature though give it a year and it'll likely be fixed, and a great game, but its a shame it didn't launch like that.

Payday 3 is the natural evolution of the second chapter and offers a solid and fun experience, although not without its edges and questionable choices, think for example of the progression structure. The feeling you get when playing the Starbreeze title is that of being in front of an Early Access that starts off very well, but on which there is still work to be done so that it can express itself at its best. It is therefore likely that production will be improved and expanded over time, just like the previous one, through the already confirmed free and paid content updates.

Payday 3 is designed around those emergent moments that only come with friends, when you're trying desperately to stay in control.

Fun and spectacular, Payday 3 marks a decent return of the Payday gang by offering refined gameplay and several new features that are also quite interesting. However, the various positive aspects, such as the possibility of swapping hostages and completing most robberies silently, are contrasted by a small number of missions and a progression system that is too slow.

If you’ve already played Payday 2 and its DLC to death, this is your logical next step; if you haven’t, go and play that first. It’s cheaper and chonkier. [Issue#34, p.96]

Since Payday3 is finally here, put on your masks, and take a stroll to the bank withdrawing your deposit, as well as everyone else's. Prepare yourself for some good action, but only after a serious dose of much needed bug and error hotfixes.

Payday 3 does what every sequel aspires to do: it improves upon its predecessor in every aspect. We see a leap in technical quality, enhancements to the core gameplay, and more intricate and thrilling missions. Right from the start, it's clear why players should consider leaving Payday 2 behind and diving into this third installment. However, at launch, we are still encountering numerous bugs and glitches. While they don't profoundly affect the overall experience, they give the impression that the title could have benefited from a few more months of development. This notion is reinforced by the lack of content: eight missions, while highly replayable, feel scant, especially after the wealth of content offered by the previous game.

It is a game with an incredible base, original mechanics and that offers hours of content. In itself, Payday 3 is a ton of fun, and if you play it with friends, it's even more fun. But although not much can be said bad about that base, it has been frustrated by a very bittersweet launch with constant server crashes, matchmaking errors, some bugs, among others. Of course, nothing that cannot be solved and that will not at all allow it, once fixed, to become a truly great game that I recommend to everyone.

The foundations of the definitive way to play Payday are as crystal clear as the protective glass you’ll inevitably smash during a heist. The quality of life improvements and the more confidently designed levels are a welcome addition to the series, though it is slim pickings at launch. Give it time for the gold to melt and Payday 3 will be quite the payout.

Payday 3 is lacking content, but that’s the easy part to fix. Luckily, the base is fantastic, and we’ve had a great time playing with friends.

It’s perhaps understandable that Payday 3 is a step back from Payday 2 in terms of content, given the years of support its predecessor has had, but it’s a shame that it doesn’t have a little more. Still, we can’t help but feel that Payday 3 is an excellent base to work from, with improved moment-to-moment gameplay. With a bit more polish and a steady stream of post-launch content, Payday 3 could ultimately prove to be an essential co-op heisting experience. Right now, however, players are likely to have some frustrations, and may quickly grow tired of playing the same missions on repeat.

Payday 3 is an improvement to a triad and true formula Payday 2 instilled — a formula that keeps you coming back for more. It plays both sides — wanting people to keep stealthy while giving players the option to make it more difficult by going in guns blazing. While I had fun rekindling my love for Wolf, Hoxton, and the gang, it’s just a modernized rehash of the same heist simulator we knew from a decade ago. As good it may be, it suffers from the live-service issue of a lack of content and an uncertain roadmap.

It offers hi-octane moments and its proposal is undoubtly attractive, but it's also crammed with bugs and some graphics that seem to come directly from the PS3-360 era.

The missions you take on in PayDay 3 are very entertaining and provide plenty of co-op fun, although it is all coupled with an endless grind that is just a bit too prominent. Additionally, the launch did not run smoothly at all, but thankfully it is more or less fine now and plays just fine. Doesn't take away from the fact that the always online requirement is annoying, the game has some bugs and glitches, and some enemies are stupidly distracting to the experience.

Unfortunately, Payday 3 is not the sequel that fans of the series where expecting. Its content is lacking but, more importantly, the shooting is weak and the AI is especially problematic.

Payday 3 suffers from a lack severe lack of refinement. Payday 2 was cooking for years. It makes little sense that Payday 3 suffered such significant problems. There was a blueprint in place that wasn’t followed and for what specific gain? A year from now this review will likely be completely irrelevant as I must believe Starbreeze will fix the game, add content to its current sparse pool, and make the experience better. But for players who purchased the game in its current state… Well that’s simply not good enough. Right now there is no quality of life. Not even a patch to fix the numerous glaring problems. Will players stick around or come back? Or will Payday 3 disappear to time like my words? Only time will tell.

If you didn’t catch the Payday bug with the first two releases it’s unlikely you’ll feel the bite with Payday 3, with so much of the game relying on what worked last time around. But if you are a curious first-timer, then Payday 3 is worth at least checking out. Thankfully the game’s launch matchmaking kinks have been ironed out, because Payday’s core cooperative chaos is still a damn fun time with the right squad. But with only eight heists, frustrating progression and some dated gameplay, this heister can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed.

Payday 3 is more of a work in progress rather than a final product as it suffers from tons of technical issues and lack of content. But it offers fantastic core gameplay mechanisms, and just perfect gunplay also builds a solid foundation that can be supported and improved by consistent updates.

A shallow shooter that doesn't offer anywhere near enough bang for your ill-gotten buck.

There’s still some hope for Payday fans if the servers and gameplay continue to improve. My only desire is to add an offline mode and more missions to make it feel more fleshed out for the base game.

After a long time, Payday returns with its third main game. Payday 3 evolves the beloved saga thanks to its satisfying changes, such as improved AI and heists that are more than up to par. However, leaving aside the numerous bugs, the cooperative shooter falls far short in terms of content.

There’s probably an audience for Payday 3, as there was for the previous game. A jank-tolerant group of friends might have fun killing some time and causing mayhem. They’d have to have a pretty low bar for shooter mechanics, graphics, and story, though. Apart from that. there’s really no reason to spend money or time with Payday 3.

PayDay 3 is a great game, but it is not 'part 3'. Instead, we got PayDay 2,5 with tons of unnecessary stuff, weird solutions and elements that are lacking. Somewhere, there is a very good game with a cool soundtrack to be found, but that's not enough.

Poorly executed, uncreative, with restricted progress and co-op being the only reason for its fun, PAYDAY 3 is a difficult recommendation even for fans of the franchise.

Payday 3 tries really hard, but good intentions alone can't guarantee a fun experience. While many individual elements may seem appealing in terms of audio and visuals, as a whole it just doesn't deliver as it should.

I expected Payday 3 to be an immersive heist sim (having not played the earlier games), but I only experienced a solid shooter with useless bots and connection issues. There is a good game hidden behind the horrid XP challenge system, but I honestly can’t recommend it in its current state.

Payday 3 is fun and engaging when it works, but more often than not, it doesn’t. The servers that are constantly down, the overall lack of content, the cut features from Payday 2, and the lazily put-together cutscenes all prevent this from being a title worth experiencing, even for the diehard fans. I have no doubt that Starbreeze will polish this title in time, but for now, it’s an easy skip.

Despite having had a decade to come up with new ideas and heists this is a disappointingly hollow sequel that offers too few reasons for not just sticking with the last game.

In its present state, it largely lacks polish and this overshadows a lot of what it gets right in terms of giving players a rich tool set and freedom in how heists are approached.

Payday 3 has its enjoyable moments, bringing its well-known cooperative heists into a new game engine. However its lack of content, outdated gunplay, underwhelming AI, and unfinished cutscenes leave a lot to be desired. If you're a series fan looking for a substantial step-up in this sequel then this isn’t it. However, if you're after a multiplayer title to clown around in for a few hours, this will suffice.

Payday 3 is unfinished and currently lacks far too much content. This is why the technology is on strike.

Not the players, but developer Starbreeze and publisher Deep Silver pulled off one of the biggest video game heists ever with Payday 3. Forty bucks for a lightweight, buggy and downright boring product: this is theft in broad daylight.