Payday 3 Review
I'll need you to come with me. This area is so restricted that smarter AI extends to combat as well, where the police do a great job of swarming you from all sides instead of standing around as target practice. It leads me to one of the most exciting changes to the heist formula: each job now has specific phases, meaning that instead of either being an unmasked stealth mode or chucking grenades around like a maniac There are now defined moments in between those two extremes that allow for different parts of the crime fantasy to be more thoroughly explored.
For example, the searching phase triggers when you've caught the authority's suspicion in a minor way and they begin actively looking for you, but all hell hasn't broken loose just yet, and the negotiation phase begins if you ever get caught outright and gives you a window of time to lock the place down to prepare for a fight.
By releasing hostages, it certainly helps that the zip ties required to keep hostages in line are no longer a limited resource too, so you're able to stack those poor bystanders as high as your heart desires as resources. It's also still a ton of fun to make your way down Payday 3's role-based skill paths while committing misdeeds and unlocking more abilities within those roles to bolster your preferred play style.
That could be the hacker path, which turns your lawbreaker into a tech wizard who can hack into security cameras and confound security systems, or the manipulator path, which grants you a silver tongue for intimidation and negotiation hold. It Get down. You can have four of the 17 available roles equipped at a time, and you can spend your skill points within those however you like, which allows you to create the perfect villainous cocktail without wasting any cherished points on stuff you won't use.
It's also nice that you level up and upgrade each of these roles by simply equipping them while out on crime sprees, which really rewards you for picking your neighbor's niche and sticking to it. Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case with payday, severe and horribly painful technical issues have returned like the cold sting of the law.
Not only are the usual connectivity issues back, but there's occasional frame rate-hitching people walking backwards for no reason and more. I'm really hoping they ironed this stuff out, but given that past entries have remained busted for months and years before finally becoming stable, there's definitely cause for concern that we're in for another Rocky ride.
Hit E3 is a solid step forward for my favorite Heist simulator franchise, even though that step is a lot smaller than I'd hoped due to a lack of launch content and the unsurprising but still majorly annoying bugs and performance issues. The awesome combat, greatly improved AI, and especially the stealth options are so massive they alone justify this as a full sequel, and the new and improved heists with clear phases to navigate them are absolutely fantastic.
I just wish there was more loot in the proverbial vault at the outset and that Star Breeze would have used its years of experience to ensure that this was a more robust and far more stable launch. I'm confident Payday 3 could become the sequel we all deserve with a year or two of updates. For now, it's a nice start.
Check out our reviews of The Lies of P and Mortal Kombat 1.
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