I want to start this review by offering a small disclaimer. At the time of this review's publishing, Payday 3's servers remain inaccessible to everyone. Luckily, most of my review was done before they got nuked, so that won't hamper my opinions on this game. It will, however, impact my final score as the game is inexcusably inaccessible for a title that demands such a high price from consumers.
I didn't really have any experience with prior games in the franchise, so I was intrigued to try out the game. What resulted from it was hours of fun and unforgettable experiences that came from heists.
I will start the review off by saying that the game looks decent. While it certainly doesn't look like it's graphically demanding, it certainly has caused one of my companions with a 1050Ti build a few issues with loading times and shader compilation stutters. On my RTX 4070 build, the game ran at a consistent framerate (120 FPS) without any sort of issues.
From my point of view, the game looks slightly better than Payday 2, but not by much. It's not like players will pay attention to the game's graphics while stealing money from banks and such, but they will at least look pretty while everything is exploding.
Something that might be more noticeable, however, is the lack of music. Payday 3 feels so empty in this regard and the few music tracks it has to compliment each heist feel a bit repetitive and die down to the background. They certainly don't stand out as much as the music in Payday 2, which constantly felt like it stood out from each heist and complimented the set pieces well, as I found out after eventually trying that game too.
The game's presentation is overall just passable. It feels like it did just enough to be classified as a next-gen title and ticks the right boxes where it needs to. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on the eye and ears of the beholder, so I'll leave it at that. In my opinion, I believe that Payday 3 could use some more effort in the BGM area with future updates to make the heists feel unique and amazing.
Now, for the real reason people came to read this review. The gameplay of Payday 3 remains as airtight and mechanically demanding as ever. For the uninitiated, this is a heist simulator in which players take the role of one of many criminals who are outfitted to conduct a heist to steal money from a bank, take precious resources from an armored truck, steal precious paintings from an art gallery, etcetera.
Heists can go one of two ways: you can either conduct them stealthily, or you can go in guns blazing and face off against the special forces brought by the police. Teamwork is essential in either scenario, as players need to constantly watch each other's backs while scouting ahead for cameras and guards or while taking down enemies.
Before I talk about the gunplay from heists, I will say that there's no feeling more satisfying than pulling off a successful stealth heist with a teammate in which pure coordination has you quickly infiltrating the building you're trying to rob and taking everything from under the noses of the security guards.
Still, there's nothing like donning the iconic masks and shooting some cops and special forces, and I love how most guns handle. The only exception here are the shotguns since they seem to be way too slow and sloppy and aren't quite as powerful as you might expect, even on point-blank range. The rest of the guns available for purchase with your stolen money are definitely worth taking a look at and each successful heist nets you more levels which means more guns to buy and toy with. The gameplay loop is addicting and worth tackling over and over with different loadouts.
I, however, will also say that this game has been riddled with bugs and performance issues even before the servers got nuked to oblivion. Payday 3 was the first game in recent memory in which I saw enemies walk through walls, be able to see through closed doors, and even have the capability of shooting from under the floor.
I think the worst part about it also has to do with the poor optimization on PC. As I mentioned, one of my teammates had a low-end rig with a 1050Ti. Unsurprisingly, said teammate had constant desync issues and random disconnects. There even was a point where he was "Cloned" by the game, locking us off the ability to reset the map even when all 3 of us voted YES.
Speaking of connection issues, Payday 3 had plenty of instances where we were assigned to ghost players or where the game just didn't load the mission we were trying to load into at all. The few times when the game worked were fun and all, but they felt like few and far between compared to the rest of the times, where something always went wrong with either the enemy AI or everything else.
Still, I suppose some people might consider this jankiness in the game to be part of its Charm, and once the game comes back online, people will continue to conduct heists and try to pull off the stealth even if things go pearshaped through no fault of their own. I still think it will take a few more years worth of content updates before I touch this game again.
I guess this is what happens when more worthwhile experiences such as Omega Strikers or Resident Evil 4 Remake constantly offer new stuff to keep players coming back, especially when they are more stable than this game, which supposedly can be played solo (but cannot be played offline for some reason, unlike the previous entry).
Payday 3 initially made me interested in the Payday franchise. Unfortunately, it also lost me just as quickly with its jankiness and online issues. If I wanted a stealth game, I could play Hitman Freelancer, and if I wanted to shoot different kinds of enemies, I have a plethora of options. I may be able to change my tune once the experience gets updated but for now, I'll just move on to something else.
Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).
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