review in progress after 56.7 hours of play

[LadyMourne]

Review in progress:
56.7 hours playtime at time of writing

TLDR:
Pros:
looks good
same addicting gameplay as payday 2
interesting buildcrafting with the edge, grit, rush system
seeded rng makes learning heists infinitely faster.
is more payday

cons:
Severe lack of content
Challenge system clunky and unfun and buggy
Heists feel incredibly small in scope and map size (big bank and dockyard are exceptions)
some heists are way to easy to stealth, even on higher difficulties.
stripped down pre-planning
little to no polish.
little map rng variety

Payday 3 feels like a game that needed more. More time, more guns, more heists, more everything. While the game features that same addictive gameplay loop of loading up into a heist and killing cops while you jumps through the hoops you need to make your money, everything else about it just seems so lackluster.

Many features we knew would not be returning, saying goodbye to perk decks is bittersweet but understandable. However I find myself scratching my head at overkills decisions to remove many things that made payday 2 feel so much more than the sequel we now have. Multi-day heists absent, your own safehouse gone, pre-planning significantly reduced in scope, a significantly reduced skill tree system, Melee combat gone entirely. Everything just feels slower, weaker, smaller, and less grandiose than what I had become spoiled by with Payday 2.

You cant argue with a lack of content, 8 heists, 17 regular weapons, with an additional prebuilt variant of them. with the secondary slot relegated to pistols only. The slimmed down prebuilding essentially boils down to being able to buy favors from gage, and being able to place med/ammo/armour bags down or a zipline. only one favor per player, four favors max. There are some other favors like being able to have the elevator shaft opened up for easy bag carrying on stealth big bank. However, I dont know if I am experiencing a glitch, or am not finding where to buy more of these level specific favors as I get to use them once, and they never return on subsequent playthroughs.

The skill system is interesting, with varied trees to try and mix and match with, you can ultimately come up with unique builds that seem fun. However, the perks are inherently weak, at least the ones based around combat. gone are the days where you can make crit dodge builds with hundreds of percent damage bonuses, now you are relegated to 3 buffs. edge, grit, and rush. Edge gives a 10% damage buff, Grit give a 10% damage taken reduction, and Rush gives you a undisclosed speed boost (I presume it to is 10 percent). These three buffs can be triggered in many different ways, and it feels like rush has the most interesting perks to play with, as some perks that consume rush blatantly break stealth difficulty. Being able to sprint through buildings with a stack of rush, with civilians and cameras ignoring all your actions is beyond broken. With transparency I personally only have 8 perk points available for my builds currently. the max amount of skill points you can obtain is 21. I have not gotten to really dive in with different builds as I just try and invest into as many skill trees as possible to rush through grinding out all of the skill unlocks. This is something that should be looked into more, as I do believe the depth of game play the skill system offers has not been fully explored yet in my time with the game.

Some missions need an increase of security measures to make them feel actually challenging. This games version of jewelry store is so boringly easy that Me alongside 2 others friends all solod it first try in stealth. Stealth in generally needs to be done on higher difficulties as the heists stealthed on anything less than very hard is a snooze fest and way too forgiving in payday 3.

However stealth is not just a negative thing, payday 3 significantly improved on stealth as a whole. With the ability to do many objectives while in casing mode, and civs and guards seemingly not carring at all if they see you hauling loot bag after lootbag to your van so long as you keep your mask off. Stealth trully shines when you play with a friend. where one of you can mask up to take out guards, while the other stays maskless to breeze through the heists without really being bothered by anyone. It was a level of communication and co-op design that really highlighted how boring co-op stealth was in payday 2 where you would often have the one good player go in and do all of the objectives while the rest of the crew act as pack mules for the loot.

One final note is that earning levels in the games infamy system is beyond boring and frustrating. Where payday 2 gave you xp based off of various hidden things you did throughout the heist, alongside heist completions, payday 3 rewards you xp from completing challenges. There are about 1100 challenges in the game, all of which will give you xp that you need to level. This however is beyond frustrating. being forced to use guns that you dont like, simply because you have to get the handful of challenges that they have associated with them sucks. my build never feeling like it was getting stronger because I kept changing to the newest and latest gun so I could grind that guns challenges. It feels so much worse than payday 2's leveling system.

Overall, while there is a lot that is good, and I am hopeful for Payday 3's future, I still cant say that this game is worth your money. this is a game that is good for gamepass, but to pay 40$/70$/90$ is just way too far. Save your money, spend 10 bucks and play on gamepass, thats about all I can say right now.

Edit:

After more hours with the game, I feel vindicated in saying the challenge xp system feels bad. Spending the entire day grinding out some of the hardest unique challenges in the game now leaves me with only doing challenges at the highest difficulty, or doing the heists upwards of a 150 times on normal or higher. 150x8=1200 heists completions for the base games 8 heists. Absurd is an understatement.

I also find myself confused on the lack of explosives based gameplay. theres an entire skill tree dedicated to being able to use explosives more effectively, but theres only one lethal grenade in the game, and only one grenade launcher with the piglet. Big issue, the piglet is an overkill weapon, so there is virtually no point in making an explosives based build because you only get to use explosives very rarely. and its dictated on whether or not you get perks to proc to refund you explosives.

I plan to update this review periodically as I get through various milestones on the game. The next update will happen when I am able to play with all of the guns, and perks.

Ps, will be transferring this too an actual review when that feature becomes available on full release.

[Bwoink ⭕⃤]

i need to heavily disagree on map size as these maps are much larger and in-depth compared to what payday 2 has that's all i have to comment on otherwise i agree.

[LadyMourne]

I apologize for any grammar/misspelling. I have been awake for far too long, but wanted to get this out before I go to bed.

[Clanka Drip]

The maps are fine , but i think they made a mistake not doing missions like in PD2 were some missions continued on with like 3 days . Such as the "Rats" mission in PD2 . A great mission were you make the drugs and go off and trade them for intel. But theres nothing similar to that here. Theyre all just quick missions.

[LadyMourne]

引用自 Bwoink：

i need to heavily disagree on map size as these maps are much larger and in-depth compared to what payday 2 has that's all i have to comment on otherwise i agree.

I think we can agree to disagree. while some maps are a bit more fleshed out, many missions like across the boarder, big oil, watchdogs, meltdown, golden grin, and any of the last heists for payday 2 are all so much more in terms of just pure map size, but also scope as to what the player was doing. I blew up an oil tanker a few months ago, where as the biggest thing I did here was rob a new version of big bank. I get that these are the first heists, but I wanted more. It really says something that I think one of the weakest heists in the game is actually supposed to be the last heist for the base games story.

[Trolling Tortoise]

This sums up my feelings. I agree with the review.

[kth]

Can you tell me what heists are easy to stealth? I suck at sneaking

[Seagull Stacks]

引用自 k33th：

Can you tell me what heists are easy to stealth? I suck at sneaking

Dirty Ice can be done on hard and very hard in 4 minutes or less with the same routing every time VERY easily without any special tricks. Also happens to be the best way to level guns giving 1100 weapon xp on very hard.

[kth]

引用自 Seagull Stacks：

引用自 k33th：

Can you tell me what heists are easy to stealth? I suck at sneaking

Dirty Ice can be done on hard and very hard in 4 minutes or less with the same routing every time VERY easily without any special tricks. Also happens to be the best way to level guns giving 1100 weapon xp on very hard.

Thanks I gonna try it, leveling guns in this game sucks hard

[MONSTERDROID]

I didn't hear about not being able to equip other non pistol weapons to secondary until this review, that is a big oof.

One of my favorite things to do in Payday 2 was to run a suppressed shotgun with slug rounds, a shotgun with dragons breath rounds, or an smg in my secondary; not being able to do that just wouldn't feel right.

Also definitely not fond of the idea of challenges for progression over just XP, I hate when challenges are required for progression akin to things like Fortnite.

[LadyMourne]

引用自 k33th：

Can you tell me what heists are easy to stealth? I suck at sneaking

Dirty Ice, No Rest for the wicked, Touch the Sky, Gold & Sharke, are all easy at hard and only become challenging at very hard or higher, as thats when they put out the roaming guard that has endless radio spawns

[LadyMourne]

引用自 MONSTERDROID：

I didn't hear about not being able to equip other non pistol weapons to secondary until this review, that is a big oof.

One of my favorite things to do in Payday 2 was to run a suppressed shotgun with slug rounds, a shotgun with dragons breath rounds, or an smg in my secondary; not being able to do that just wouldn't feel right.

Also definitely not fond of the idea of challenges for progression over just XP, I hate when challenges are required for progression akin to things like Fortnite.

There is a total of 6 sidearms, 4 pistols, and 2 revolvers. they all are kind of meh. My friends biggest complain is the complete removal of Melee, as you cant even kill anyone with the melee button, and you cant choose a unique melee weapon. Im finding that my biggest gripe is the lack of explosive options. no grenade launchers besides the overkill piglet, and even then it tends to kill my armour instead of kill enemies.

[⸢кяуртіс⸥™]

The issue is is all the things you mentioned were accumulated over what... nearly 10 years worth of updates.

When it came out it had a handful of heists, totally different skills closer to what 3 has, it did have more weapons but most weren't used and were there as filler until the DLC stuff started coming which was 80% of the weapons. etc etc and so on. Its stupid to compare a game technically not out yet to a 10yr old game that had new content as late as late last year/early this year.

[Bab]

引用自 ⸢кяуртіс⸥™：

The issue is is all the things you mentioned were accumulated over what... nearly 10 years worth of updates.

When it came out it had a handful of heists, totally different skills closer to what 3 has, it did have more weapons but most weren't used and were there as filler until the DLC stuff started coming which was 80% of the weapons. etc etc and so on. Its stupid to compare a game technically not out yet to a 10yr old game that had new content as late as late last year/early this year.

They literally could just port everything over, they have the 3D models and whatnot for all weapons but you're right. We should wait til the game has 50+ paid DLC's then we can thoroughly review this game. First paid DLC will come out in 1-2 months, lets open our wallets.

[Red]

引用自 ⸢кяуртіс⸥™：

The issue is is all the things you mentioned were accumulated over what... nearly 10 years worth of updates.

When it came out it had a handful of heists, totally different skills closer to what 3 has, it did have more weapons but most weren't used and were there as filler until the DLC stuff started coming which was 80% of the weapons. etc etc and so on. Its stupid to compare a game technically not out yet to a 10yr old game that had new content as late as late last year/early this year.

why are there so many smooth brained fan boys, same flags were waved when diablo 4 launched.

They dont have to spend the next 10 years getting payday 3 back to the quality of payday 2. They already have 10 years worth of player feedback and coding experience

[progress781]

引用自 Red：

引用自 ⸢кяуртіс⸥™：

The issue is is all the things you mentioned were accumulated over what... nearly 10 years worth of updates.

When it came out it had a handful of heists, totally different skills closer to what 3 has, it did have more weapons but most weren't used and were there as filler until the DLC stuff started coming which was 80% of the weapons. etc etc and so on. Its stupid to compare a game technically not out yet to a 10yr old game that had new content as late as late last year/early this year.

why are there so many smooth brained fan boys, same flags were waved when diablo 4 launched.

They dont have to spend the next 10 years getting payday 3 back to the quality of payday 2. They already have 10 years worth of player feedback and coding experience

This. Its like they learned nothing from the past 10 years. Bunch of missing features that Im sure they plan on re-adding in dlc to milk for cash. I done with it.