Overkill has been hyping this game for a while now: it took them 10 years to finally decide to put Payday 2 to rest... Was the wait worth it?
Let's start by saying Payday 3 is NOT a finished game. With an extremely selective arsenal and number of missions, Payday 3 lacks lots of content, which is something Payday 2 was praised for instead. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but if you consider the game is 40 euros as of now... It's not worth it.
Story-wise, Payday 3 goes back to the more grounded roots of the first Payday game, with a huge shift from the more playful color palettes of Payday 2 to make space for a grittier experience. So far it's limited to only 8 heists with two cutscenes dividing them each time. It makes it easier to follow the main story compared to the way you did that in Payday 2, but at the same time the lack of Crime.NET kills the replay ability for all the missions.
Optimization is also a huge flaw, as the matchmaking is just overcomplicated for no reason, getting into a solo mission requires too much work, and performance on older hardware can be unpleasant even at lower settings.
The thing that really shines about Payday 3 is its gameplay. The new movement system makes it much more appealing than the older Payday games, making it more engaging and adding more to the overall skill ceiling, making it a real challenge to know how to properly play with everything. The enemies are just as engaging to fight as they were in Payday 2, perhaps the similarities could be another thing to criticise though, as there hasn't been any improvement in that aspect.
Overall, Payday 3 is a game I'll play in the future to make sure to keep my review up to date as I believe it has the potential to be the best Payday option one day. For now, if you're thinking about buying it, buy Payday 2 instead.
Let's start by saying Payday 3 is NOT a finished game. With an extremely selective arsenal and number of missions, Payday 3 lacks lots of content, which is something Payday 2 was praised for instead. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but if you consider the game is 40 euros as of now... It's not worth it.
Story-wise, Payday 3 goes back to the more grounded roots of the first Payday game, with a huge shift from the more playful color palettes of Payday 2 to make space for a grittier experience. So far it's limited to only 8 heists with two cutscenes dividing them each time. It makes it easier to follow the main story compared to the way you did that in Payday 2, but at the same time the lack of Crime.NET kills the replay ability for all the missions.
Optimization is also a huge flaw, as the matchmaking is just overcomplicated for no reason, getting into a solo mission requires too much work, and performance on older hardware can be unpleasant even at lower settings.
The thing that really shines about Payday 3 is its gameplay. The new movement system makes it much more appealing than the older Payday games, making it more engaging and adding more to the overall skill ceiling, making it a real challenge to know how to properly play with everything. The enemies are just as engaging to fight as they were in Payday 2, perhaps the similarities could be another thing to criticise though, as there hasn't been any improvement in that aspect.
Overall, Payday 3 is a game I'll play in the future to make sure to keep my review up to date as I believe it has the potential to be the best Payday option one day. For now, if you're thinking about buying it, buy Payday 2 instead.