I've been a big Payday fan for years. Currently, I've played over 600 hours of Payday 2 and 47 hours of Payday: The Heist.

I generally don't preorder games. I think it's foolish to pay money for a product that isn't released yet. Especially considering you could wait and get it after reviews for a lower price. When Payday 3 was announced, I did something that I rarely ever do for a video game. I preordered Payday 3 for $40. I had seen the pictures and trailers and was cautiously optimistic about what seemed to be a very promising game.

Unfortunately, it pains me to say that this game fell short of even some of my lowest expectations and is easily the worst entry in the Payday series.

First off, I want to say that you can 100% enjoy Payday 3 and still recognize the major flaws with this game. I know that despite the issues, I've had fun with Payday 3 and I think this game can still be saved, but there is no denying that the game is unfinished.

Payday 3 shipped missing tons of animations that were added in a later patch and shown off in a video by the developers as some great new addition, instead of being delayed content that didn't meet the initial release date. The game has also been dealing with major balancing issues that will be further addressed in the 'Design Issues' section of this review. In dealing with these balancing issues, Overkill, instead of releasing a complete balance change in one update, have been piece-mailing the changes across multiple updates. They will release part of a balance change, then release the other part that completes it later. This leaves the game in very awkward stages where the balancing is totally off until they return and finish what they originally intended. This design philosophy of 'release now, fix later' is a complete joke and a terrible way of managing a live service title. It makes these updates appear unplanned, uncoordinated, lazy, and rushed.

The first DLC heist of Payday 3, Syntax Error, introduces a new enemy to the game: The Techie. Unfortunately, this enemy was released as part of a paid DLC while missing relevant voice lines from not only Shade, but the heisters are missing their lines related to the Techie as well. This is supposed to be added... in a later update. I'd like to add that Syntax Error is the single most expensive DLC heist in Payday history. Is the price increase really worth it when they're selling you unfinished content?

How is any of this acceptable? This also isn't even mentioning the massive amount of bugs in the game at launch.

'Release now, fix later'. The unfortunate motto of Payday 3.

When Payday 3 launched, it was unplayable for nearly an entire week. This was due to the awful decision of making this game online only. The initial server issues have smoothed out, but it still remains an issue for many players. It is unacceptable to pay for a game that can be played fully single player and still require a constant internet connection. You could be at the very end of a 40 minute heist when suddenly, your internet goes out. You will be kicked out of your heist with no absolutely no reward and the game you paid for will become a digital paperweight until your service returns. There are no good reasons why solo players must deal with this.

Offline needs to be added to Payday 3 or else this game will become vaporware whenever the servers shut down.

Firstly, the XP system is awful. This point has been beaten to death by other reviewers, but it's so bad that I can't not mention it. Payday 2 had the XP system nailed down years ago. In Payday 2, you get most of your XP from completing heists coupled with bag XP based on the amount of loot you secured. Then you get bonuses depending on if you found Gage Packages and whether you had XP boosts on your weapons or not. This system wasn't perfect, but it worked and made most people happy with progression. Payday 3 instead opts to make the majority of gaining XP based around the challenge system. This change leads to toxic gameplay where instead of playing as a team, players are more worried about grinding out weapon challenges and camping, rather than completing heists. Heist XP payout was nonexistent in the day one release of Payday 3. They have since added Heist completion XP, but it's a fairly small amount and still leaves challenges as the main way of grinding XP. And it is a huge grind. Unfortunately, this is an issue most players won't even face until they hit around level 30-40. Once you run out of the quick, easy challenges, XP gain slows to a crawl and that's when the game stops being fun.

The team AI is also quite bad. Very often, the team AI is more of a nuisance than a help due to a few key reasons. Unlike Payday 2, you can't tell bots to hold their position or follow you. They hardly utilize cover and they will boldly run into the most terrible spots and go down. This unpredictable and stupid bot behavior has risked or ruined so many heists for me and it's incredibly frustrating every single time. This wouldn't be as much of an issue, if you could just tell them to hold their positions, like in Payday 2. The team AI also can't revive players when they're downed, they can only get you up if a cloaker knocks you down, that's it. The team AI in Payday 3 is somehow downgraded from Payday 2 which I didn't even think was possible.

Payday 3 also has notable balancing issues. The most significant issue being medic bags and armor bags. Payday 3 is a game that on launch, and even currently, heavily rewards armor over health. You could gain health in multiple ways, but armor was limited to only being gained by using armor bags. This design makes armor much more of a valuable resource than health. Overkill noticed that medic bags were under-performing, so instead of buffing medic bags, they instead made the controversial decision to nerf armor bags and then add other ways of gaining armor in a later update. The balance still isn't any better even after these changes, and at this point I'm not even sure if Overkill has an actual plan of how to fix this issue.

Throughout the many controversies of Payday 3, Overkill has been very inconsistent with addressing issues. Aside from the main official communication, Almir and Elizabeth from Overkill occasionally live stream the game and answer viewer questions. This is a great thing, but unfortunately there are some questions that seem to be consistently ignored by both official communication and the Q&A portions of the live streams. Questions regarding a potential offline mode or a server browser are often either dismissed, answered as vaguely as possible, or just completely ignored despite many users asking. Overkill has a great opportunity to gain trust and connect with their fans by being direct and honest, but unfortunately they choose to either ignore key issues or give vague answers that have little to no value. Why not allow fans to be in the loop? Why is there no guarantees of an offline mode? It it because Deep Silver won't allow it? Is it an internal decision made by Overkill? We don't know.

As much as I wanted to love Payday 3, there is simply no way I can recommend this unfinished, overpriced game to anybody in it's current state. Overkill doesn't deserve the money as they have continually proven to disregard the quality of their releases. Overkill gladly sells their fans unfinished, expensive content with the idea of vaguely fixing it later. If the DLC prices aren't insulting enough, know that microtransactions are planned to be added to Payday 3 in 2024. This is a toxic and greedy way of selling a game and Overkill should not be rewarded.

If Overkill can manage to regain the trust of their players and actually make this right, then I will reconsider my rating.

4/10

[h1][Introduction][/h1] I've been a big Payday fan for years. Currently, I've played over 600 hours of Payday 2 and 47 hours of Payday: The Heist. I generally don't preorder games. I think it's foolish to pay money for a product that isn't released yet. Especially considering you could wait and get it after reviews for a lower price. When Payday 3 was announced, I did something that I rarely ever do for a video game. I preordered Payday 3 for $40. I had seen the pictures and trailers and was cautiously optimistic about what seemed to be a very promising game. Unfortunately, it pains me to say that this game fell short of even some of my lowest expectations and is easily the worst entry in the Payday series. [h1][Payday 3 is an unfinished game][/h1] First off, I want to say that you can 100% enjoy Payday 3 and still recognize the major flaws with this game. I know that despite the issues, I've had fun with Payday 3 and I think this game can still be saved, but there is no denying that the game is unfinished. Payday 3 shipped missing tons of animations that were added in a later patch and shown off in a video by the developers as some great new addition, instead of being delayed content that didn't meet the initial release date. The game has also been dealing with major balancing issues that will be further addressed in the 'Design Issues' section of this review. In dealing with these balancing issues, Overkill, instead of releasing a complete balance change in one update, have been piece-mailing the changes across multiple updates. They will release part of a balance change, then release the other part that completes it later. This leaves the game in very awkward stages where the balancing is totally off until they return and finish what they originally intended. This design philosophy of 'release now, fix later' is a complete joke and a terrible way of managing a live service title. It makes these updates appear unplanned, uncoordinated, lazy, and rushed. The first DLC heist of Payday 3, Syntax Error, introduces a new enemy to the game: The Techie. Unfortunately, this enemy was released as part of a [u]paid[/u] DLC while missing relevant voice lines from not only Shade, but the heisters are missing their lines related to the Techie as well. This is supposed to be added... in a later update. I'd like to add that [u]Syntax Error is the single most expensive DLC heist in Payday history[/u]. Is the price increase really worth it when they're selling you unfinished content? How is any of this acceptable? This also isn't even mentioning the massive amount of bugs in the game at launch. 'Release now, fix later'. The unfortunate motto of Payday 3. [h1][Technical Issues][/h1] When Payday 3 launched, it was unplayable for nearly an entire week. This was due to the awful decision of making this game online only. The initial server issues have smoothed out, but it still remains an issue for many players. It is unacceptable to pay for a game that can be played fully single player and still require a constant internet connection. You could be at the very end of a 40 minute heist when suddenly, your internet goes out. You will be kicked out of your heist with no absolutely no reward and the game you paid for will become a digital paperweight until your service returns. There are no good reasons why solo players must deal with this. Offline needs to be added to Payday 3 or else this game will become vaporware whenever the servers shut down. [h1][Design Issues][/h1] Firstly, the XP system is awful. This point has been beaten to death by other reviewers, but it's so bad that I can't not mention it. Payday 2 had the XP system nailed down years ago. In Payday 2, you get most of your XP from completing heists coupled with bag XP based on the amount of loot you secured. Then you get bonuses depending on if you found Gage Packages and whether you had XP boosts on your weapons or not. This system wasn't perfect, but it worked and made most people happy with progression. Payday 3 instead opts to make the majority of gaining XP based around the challenge system. This change leads to toxic gameplay where instead of playing as a team, players are more worried about grinding out weapon challenges and camping, rather than completing heists. Heist XP payout was nonexistent in the day one release of Payday 3. They have since added Heist completion XP, but it's a fairly small amount and still leaves challenges as the main way of grinding XP. And it is a huge grind. Unfortunately, this is an issue most players won't even face until they hit around level 30-40. Once you run out of the quick, easy challenges, XP gain slows to a crawl and that's when the game stops being fun. The team AI is also quite bad. Very often, the team AI is more of a nuisance than a help due to a few key reasons. Unlike Payday 2, you can't tell bots to hold their position or follow you. They hardly utilize cover and they will boldly run into the most terrible spots and go down. This unpredictable and stupid bot behavior has risked or ruined so many heists for me and it's incredibly frustrating every single time. This wouldn't be as much of an issue, if you could just tell them to hold their positions, like in Payday 2. The team AI also can't revive players when they're downed, they can only get you up if a cloaker knocks you down, that's it. The team AI in Payday 3 is somehow downgraded from Payday 2 which I didn't even think was possible. Payday 3 also has notable balancing issues. The most significant issue being medic bags and armor bags. Payday 3 is a game that on launch, and even currently, heavily rewards armor over health. You could gain health in multiple ways, but armor was limited to only being gained by using armor bags. This design makes armor much more of a valuable resource than health. Overkill noticed that medic bags were under-performing, so instead of buffing medic bags, they instead made the controversial decision to nerf armor bags and then add other ways of gaining armor in a later update. The balance still isn't any better even after these changes, and at this point I'm not even sure if Overkill has an actual plan of how to fix this issue. [h1][Transparency or lack thereof][/h1] Throughout the many controversies of Payday 3, Overkill has been very inconsistent with addressing issues. Aside from the main official communication, Almir and Elizabeth from Overkill occasionally live stream the game and answer viewer questions. This is a great thing, but unfortunately there are some questions that seem to be consistently ignored by both official communication and the Q&A portions of the live streams. Questions regarding a potential offline mode or a server browser are often either dismissed, answered as vaguely as possible, or just completely ignored despite many users asking. Overkill has a great opportunity to gain trust and connect with their fans by being direct and honest, but unfortunately they choose to either ignore key issues or give vague answers that have little to no value. Why not allow fans to be in the loop? Why is there no guarantees of an offline mode? It it because Deep Silver won't allow it? Is it an internal decision made by Overkill? We don't know. [h1][Conclusion][/h1] As much as I wanted to love Payday 3, there is simply no way I can recommend this unfinished, overpriced game to anybody in it's current state. Overkill doesn't deserve the money as they have continually proven to disregard the quality of their releases. Overkill gladly sells their fans unfinished, expensive content with the idea of vaguely fixing it later. If the DLC prices aren't insulting enough, know that [u]microtransactions are planned to be added to Payday 3 in 2024[/u]. This is a toxic and greedy way of selling a game and Overkill should not be rewarded. If Overkill can manage to regain the trust of their players and actually make this right, then I will reconsider my rating. 4/10