I'm sorry, I love Payday 1 and 2, but if the current version of this game is "fixed", then playing at launch must have been pure torture.

The game feels devoid of any soul; generic UI, a pile of DLCs a year after launch already, clunky movement, spongy enemies and I even managed to get softlocked in the tutorial.

Maybe it really is miles better than at launch, but as a guy who only got swayed by the recent wave of positive reviews, I am refunding this less than 1 hour in.

The game's in a much better state nowadays. Similar to Cyberpunk 2077, it deserved its scrutiny on release, but it has genuinely turned around and is an enjoyable experience.

Payday 2 was the game I dedicated most of my time to when it came out and it was my bread and butter every time, this game feels like someone slapped the payday name on a cheap knock off.

There is basically nothing that the dev team carried over from payday 2 aside from the styling, all the skills and mechanics are brand new all the missions are new and the UI is just horriblely designed. This is the least user friendly system I have seen in a while, also 90% of the missions are locked behind paid DLC.

You can't actually use or unlock most of the guns and weapons until at least level 30 and don't even think about customizing any of your equipment, because once again it is all locked behind high levels.

Also one of the largest pieces of payday 2 was the skill trees and the creativity you could make with each class setup depending on the mission you were going into. That ENTIRE system is gone, litterally does not even exist in this game.
The only skill trees are the skill sets you would choose that could help just a little bit to add some dodge mechanics or bag throwing or the new throwables that were added to payday 2 (those don't exist here btw).

Litterally all the dev team had to do with this game was reskin it, make it run better and look prettier with new weapons, maps and story lines and they would have been millions. Instead they decided to try and reinvent the wheel and it sucks.

Honestly speaking if you have never played a payday game before you'll probably enjoy this version its very simple but also super complex. For any and all payday veterans its not worth your time unless the game is free or $5, anything above that is an absolute waste of time and money.