It's very easy to tell this game was done on the cheap and not by the original devs.

The official levels are no where near the quality of RoA2, there's no flavour to them, they all feel like they were made in the level editor and with repeated use of 90 degree bends and jump pads.

A lot of the quality of life improvements from 1 to 2 are gone, you can't play the levels in order like you could in RoA2 which makes lobbies a pain to use. Little things like race mode only requiring two stars to win with no way of changing it are very annoying.

There's a lot of bug and connection issues and a huge lack of general polish such as the boulder animations are very frame-y. I didn't expect completely new assets for everything but it's all mostly reused so this could have been an expansion to the previous game.

I don't expect this game to get fixed or updated anytime soon either and it's a massive shame.

Stick with 2, they dropped the boulder on this one.

Man this is heartbreaking. I thought 2 was a dang masterpiece, and this one is just not. The game FEELS bad. The interface is awful, the camera in Build mode is jacked, the respawn system is bad, the AI is bad, there's just tons of little nuisances. I found one campaign map where it was impossible to make one jump with just a moderately heavy boulder.

But the WORST part is that the devs seem to have used the inbuilt level editor to design all the campaign maps and boy does it show. The beautiful meticulously handcrafted clever levels of 2 are GONE. Everything unnaturally juts out of an empty plane, decorated with a small handful of cut and paste assets.

For what it's worth Patricio Meneses is, as always, killing it with the OST.

A review taking place about halfway through the main game.

This entry into the Rock of Ages series isn't as polished or well thought out as its second entry, but it is by far and large not nearly as problematic as many popular reviews say it is. I wouldn't even go as far as to say it's disappointing like many have. It's really just more Rock of Ages with a slight shift to quanitity over quality by a mildly noticeable albeit relatively small margin.

The attention to detail in each stage is certainly not as good as its predecessor, and the difference in quality can be felt throughout (level designs are simpler, win-screen doesn't show squished opponents, collisions in areas can be funky where they didn't used to be) but it doesn't ruin the fun that Rock of Ages offers. Traps are still fun to place, the game still plays like it usually does, and the new stuff is really fun to mess with.

With the inclusion of all previous boulders and traps along with new ones, as well as a fully fledged level creator, it really was a developer choice to focus on including as much as possible. If you want something that feels more fully fleshed out and hand-crafted, go for RoA2. RoA3 may not be as carefully put together, but it's certainly worth playing.

It's Rock of Ages 2, but worse. Most of the absurd humor has been stripped out, leaning entirely on the 'joke' that things are poorly drawn and animated. Level design is now entirely blind hairpin turns, changing the pace of the game from careful acceleration to a constant series of stop and go till you have the final goal in sight. The tower defense levels are mind numbingly stupid, they didn't bother to put any strategy into it, so you just plop down walls and anything else you can afford then spam lightning bolts.

While the maps are a bit of a step down from the previous games, especialy compared to 2 where they are clearly less inspired and has a less cohesive aesthetic, the new units more than make up for it. The game was a bit buggy at launch but after 1.04 i've not ahd any issues.

The AI feels a bit wonkier this timne around sadly, but the story mode has a lot more side content to explore and the humpity dumpty levels are a treat. Music remains a treat.

If you're new to the series, get 2. If you liked 2, give 3 a shot and you'll also enjoy it. It's about on par with 1.

nice balls

Edit: Patch 1.01:
Fatal error crashed to desktop first race.

Day one review:
As it stands this is the buggiest Rock of Ages game I've played. I've been knocked through the floor numerous times, bounced over the enemy in the castle; gone through the wall then got stuck in the castle wall unable to do anything but wait for the ai to win or restart twice, the music cuts out if you retry a level once you've finished it, on the world map when you unlock something the notification animation and sound effect is repeated every time you press confirm so you can spam it, then the fatal error that crashed me to desktop mid race.

All these problems without even trying to make a level or play online. In it's current state I can't recommend it.

Edit:
As for the game itself; it's missing a lot of the charm and personality the first two games had. It's kept the Monty Python art style but dropped the writing and humour. I've made it 5 bosses in and there's hardly any writing at all. At best you get some very mild slapstick and the speech is replaced with comedy mumbling, there's nothing clever or funny about it. Yeah comedy and humour is subjective but even compared to the previous games you can see a clear difference.

A lot of the levels seem poorly balanced and not thought through. For example there are levels where you can only use 1 or 2 types of obstacle. The ai will have all of them placed and start rolling before you've even fully looked at the map to work out where's best to place them. So you find yourself just front loading your towers in the hope you can start before the ai, if you do you'll get to the castle first no problem. But then you have to fight one of the obstacles inside the castle from a stand still. Since momentum is how you get through most obstacles it can be infuriating since the ai is still rolling towards you. You also have to wait for the enemy in the castle to despawn before the ai stops moving, so it might be possible to still lose after beating the enemy.

On paper it's got everything you'd expect from the previous games but more, in reality the game feels weaker in every category. Though In fairness I never tried the level creator or online. Since user generated content doesn't interest me in the slightest and the online has been historically unstable in this franchise I'd rather not bother.

Big fan of the series, but unfortunately I'm quite disappointed in this entry. It feels like the producers of this game tried sticking to the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" strategy without actually realising what makes the previous games so good.

The game suffers from generally flat execution of it's core gameplay mechanics. Level progression just became grindy with completing extra game modes necessary to open up new levels. The quirky humour is mostly absent being reduced to some slapstick here and there. Even game music feels like a downgrade compared to the previous game.

Honestly, haven't tried the map editor yet, and I'm pretty sure that some user generated levels will eventually raise the quality bar for this game, but so far the game does not justify such an egregious price tag and I doubt it ever will.

If you still want to try it out, get it on a considerably reduced price and keep your expectations very low.

The game is great, a straight upgrade to rock of ages 2 with more obstacles, boulders and gamemodes but there are so many bugs I just need to give this a negative review. Honestly if you can look past the incredibly infurating bugs (you can get stuck under enemy units and instantly die, UI sometimes doesnt show up in gamemodes such as obstacle course or skee-boulder, your units just do not attack the enemy boulder wich affects mostly the rams where they attack once, turn around, and stop moving for the rest of the game) this game is an expanded rock of ages 2. Also keep in mind the game doesn't save progress on the steam cloud so if you start up a new game on a different computer you'll have to start from the beginning.
I haven't used the map maker much so I cannot speak of any bugs or errors you might encounter there.

Overall the game is very fun, just like its predecessors, but you need to ignore some absolutely infurating alt+f4 moments to get enjoyment out of the game. Of course the bugs arent so common as to make the game unplayable, you might be able to play at least two to three games without encountering any, if you don't use the ram (wich is also the strongest unit with the heavenly bull when it works).

I'm sad to see this game in such a pitiful state, and it seems that work on the game has been discontinued so no more patches or bug fixes. I hope this was helpful.

Can't recommend it at the moment. I loved RoA 2 and spent some fun time with my buddy in it. My expectations weren't that high for RoA 3. At least it should be as much fun as the last game with some new stuff to play around. Unfortunately it already felt buggy in the first 2 hours i played it. Got stuck some times without any reason. Visual Bugs are there. Incomprehensible behavior of the KI. Why am i limited while they got everything and a head-start?
Also as it seems to me you can only play community maps online. Guess what on day 1? Most of them are trash, tests, unfinished and you can't really sort 'em out. You have to play the campagne alone to unlock new features. While that might be okay for some, i prefer to play it with my buddy, get excited over new stuff together and just derp around. Playing ~5hours solo to get the full experience and than start into multiplayer isn't my taste in this type of game.

Maybe someday this gonna be good and i'll update my review. But at this point: No. I would wait. Feels very much unpolished.