Okay so, this is gonna be more of an updated bunch of thoughts I’m sharing about Payday 3 as of February 2024 than a review. And yes, obviously most of these things that I will say are gonna be negative, but from someone who’s a passionate fan and only wants the best for the game.

The truth is I’ve been playing Payday 2 since before release, that’s over ten years now. I’ve accumulated thousands of hours across several platforms and went back and played Payday: The Heist as well. I was unbelievably excited about Payday 3, but… The game should not have come out so fast. If they said September 2024, hell, I would not be mad. We could have easily, and damn well merrily handled another year of Payday 2.

There are many issues to address with the game, I’ll start by saying it has the groundwork to truly be an amazing, fun, and complete package. The shooting and gunplay is very grounded and fun, the heists are very well designed and replayable, the new stealth system is greatly improved and challenging, but there’s a number of problems that stop all of that,

With the main one for me being, how the hell are you gonna sell this game as an all-in-all multiplayer/co-op experience to be enjoyed by friends and randoms alike across different platforms… But then, the game tries its absolute HARDEST, to prevent you from almost all of that.

When you finish a heist whether it’s with your friends or randoms, the game automatically kicks all of you out of the lobby and you’re back to being alone, having to look for them and invite them all again, the lobby system itself is so bad and doesn’t allow you to properly change anything, doesn’t allow you to unready if you accidentally ready up, doesn’t have a text chat, doesn’t allow you to kick players when the game has started, and much more.

In Payday 2 it was the simplest but most perfect system: If you join a random and finish a heist with them, the game automatically puts you into a lobby together, where you could chat and decide which heist to do next, change your weapons and loadouts, and so much more. I don’t understand what made them unable to simply carry this system over to Payday 3.

And the sad part is, this has been killing the game’s player base to the point where now, when you (for some reason) wait for minutes and minutes for a damn match, you just end up entering a lobby all alone, and have to wait for someone to join, and more often than not, nobody will.

This is my current main gripe with the game other than the obvious one: The lack of an offline mode, but that’s been discussed a lot already and I’d like to believe that it’s not exactly the devs fault but the notoriously money hungry publishers, Deep Silver.

But that’s sadly not all. There’s still a lot about the game that is missing or needs changing. The menus are… boring, bland, colorless and uninspired, they’re wonky to navigate and are annoying, customization is so lacking, weapon and mask customization is not nearly as good or detailed as Payday 2, and in general there’s barely any preset masks, not many goofy outfits, there’s no incentive to keep grinding.

And there’s so many other features and things that are beloved in this franchise that are missing for some unknown reason. Like… there's no melee weapons. You just hit enemies with your gun’s ass and that’s it. How the hell are you gonna take away melee weapons after Payday 2 was well-known for its wide and wacky selection of dumbass melee weapons ranging from comically large spoons to money stacks and katanas? W H Y ?

And of course many other things, like the lack of a jukebox/music selector before a heist, in a franchise with unbelievably beloved and popular music that even people who are not part of the game’s tight community have heard one or two tracks from it before. I don’t get it.

Overall, I say all of this as a passionate fan and player of over ten years who does not want to see the game/franchise crash and burn, and wants the devs to get it together and work to make the game become the best version of itself it can be, and that is still possible.

Once all of those issues are fixed, we can look forward to new content and DLC, and with all of that: We finally have a damn good Payday game. I really hope we can reach that. The game definitely needed a lot more time in the oven, but it’s okay, let’s try and be hopeful.

Randomly decided to give a quick replay cause of all the "Cat zoning out" memes with the remix of Aquatic Ambience playing in the background, and man, the sudden wave of imminent nostalgia that hit me while playing was something else. Despite the weird and janky level design at times, it still holds up and is more than stellar if you're looking for a challenging but still fun time. It doesn't hand-hold you ever through any moment, but rather expects you to learn and get used to its mechanics. And trust me, when you're exhausting lives at the speed of light in the ice stages, you'll more than get used to it. Also, I friggin' love Diddy. Artistically I love this game, I find the visuals stunning, and they kinda represent a majority of the visuals of the SNES era for me and why I love them so much. Never could beat this game as a kid, now feels absolutely great doing so as an adult :)