What do you get when you mix American football and Warhammer? You get Blood Bowl. Over the last few years, I have been getting more and more invested in the Warhammer world and the pile of plastic shame is ever-growing. It started with 40K, then went onto the Kill-team, and then slowly into Blood Bowl. I am still new to the game but love the idea and think it’s a nice change from the usual Warhammer that I’m used to. I mainly play Nurgle but while playing Blood Bowl 3 found a love for the Skaven. My time playing Blood Bowl 3 was on the PlayStation 5, so this review will cover that.
For those not in the loop, Blood Bowl 3 is a turn-based fantasy sports game based on the Games Workshop board game Blood Bowl. With the latest edition in the franchise, it is available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Series X/S with a Nintendo Switch version coming later in the year. Blood Bowl 3 uses the Second Edition ruleset from the board game meaning players are able to play the most up-to-date version of the game, which is pretty cool if you are playing Blood Bowl tabletop and want to have ago on the video game to keep the Blood pumping for more Blood Bowl action. Like mentioned above Blood Bowl is a fantasy version of American Football but with a lot of rules and dice throwing thrown into the mix. Wars are no longer an issue in the Old World as the populace decided to solve all conflicts with Blood Bowl, though this isn’t for the faint-hearted as murder, mutilation, cheating and corruption (to name a few) are all fair game.
Create your dream team with up to 16 players, at the beginning of each player you can field up to 11 players at a time to try and score a touchdown or defend against the other team. You can strategically try and injure, kill, or maim the enemy team to reduce their numbers and make it easier for you to score touchdowns. Each of your turns uses a strict 2-minute timer that you must utilize to make sure you secure the upper hand. You can choose from an array of different plays and strategies to try and defend or score touchdowns but ultimately, a lot of the game comes down to a roll of the dice. When playing on a tabletop it is one of the main joys, rolling your dice and watching the numbers reveal themselves. Sadly, this joy is taken away from when playing virtually as it’s all randomly generated and sometimes does feel a bit bios. Each of the teams comes with its perks, skills, and benefits that we see in the tabletop version, which you can use to give you an advantage at times. The tutorial in Blood Bowl 3 was lacking in all honesty and I didn’t get a full feel for the game until I had completed a few of the single-player events and had a proper sit down with the rule book and watched a few videos. I feel that it isn’t welcoming for new players to the hobby and could turn people away as it does take a while to feel comfortable with the game and find your feet if you are like me who is new to Blood Bowl.
There is a new single-player campaign that is based around you coaching a team and participating in a brand-new Blood Bowl Event: The Clash of Sponsors, where you will champion your team against AI and try to become the best team in the old world. It’s a nice starting point to learn the teams as well as get a better understanding of the way the game plays out. I enjoyed the single-player as it allowed me to dabble in teams that I haven’t come across on tabletop. However, what I will say, is that the gameplay was super buggy and glitchy. There were a times when I had to back out of the game and reload it because it froze or timed itself out and wouldn’t move on to the next play. The animations at times would be slow and choppy but when I didn’t come across issues, I did enjoy the gameplay and also loved the look of all the character models as usually, they are static plastic models.
For me most of the fun came from the multiplayer, I liked the idea of playing against other Blood Bowl players and learning a thing or two from them as well as fleshing out my team. There is also a competitive season with an official ladder that you can try and work your way up in. If you have friends who also have this game you can set up your leagues which is a super cool idea if you aren’t able to meet up at your local gaming hub to play on the tabletop you can do it virtually which is fantastic. Then you can quickplay as well which gives Blood Bowl 3 endless potential when it comes to replay value, that is if they can fix out the servers as they are a tad bit buggy at the moment with disconnection and lagging.
After doing some reading up on the game, I found out that it doesn’t have 1/3rd of the teams that the previous game had. This is a bit of a shock seeing as you would have thought a newer game would be more advanced than the last but apparently, they might be coming later down the line, I just hope it isn’t in the form of paid DLC or a battle bass which the game seems to have as well. I think I can live without different dice skins, to be honest. I just want to play.
It is nice to see that the game is using the latest rule set that Games Workshop is using on the tabletop version so that players can jump in and continue learning the game while playing virtually. You can test out teams and competitions to see if they could work on the tabletop.
Graphically the game looks good, it isn’t anything spectacular, but it gets the job done. I feel that the camera angles are annoying at times and that certain plays and actions have major frame drop that ruins the visuals but all in all the game is playable and that’s all that matters really. The character models are spot on and they have done a fantastic job at bringing the miniatures to life, I liked seeing the Nurgle team the most as these are my mains on the tabletop, and also think they did a cracking job at making the different stadiums seeing as on tabletop they are just defined by a different play mat. The UI in Blood Bowl 3 is very untidy and confusing at times, trying to navigate through the menus and activating certain features can be the right game which makes gameplay frustrating. Audio wise Blood Bowl 3 creates the atmosphere of being at a football game with the added commentary that after a while gets repetitive and it just blends into the back.
Blood Bowl 3 has a lot of replay value due to it being online and having a load of different teams to choose from. Seeing as each team plays differently it gives you a chance to try them out and build the ultimate team composition. The single-play campaign is a good starting point to learn all the ins and outs of the game before you venture onto the big leagues (online). There are noticeable server issues at the moment that make online play frustrating but hopefully, they get this sorted soon as online will be the way forward to keeping this game active. The AI is fun to play against, but it feels a lot more challenging and rewarding when going against others online.
Conclusion
Sadly, for me, Blood Bowl 3 didn’t live up to my expectations. I have recently gotten into the tabletop version and enjoy it very much. I’m not sure whether it’s the fact that you don’t get to roll the dice yourself or whether the bugginess gets in the way of the game but it just didn’t hit the mark for me. It’s a nice way to see the other teams and maybe try them out before buying the actual models but I think when it comes to Blood Bowl I will be playing tabletop not virtually. I liked the visual animations of all the teams and the solo campaign was enjoyable but at the moment it is riddled with bugs, glitches, and server errors which is not what you want in a video game. Hopefully, this can get sorted with a patch but when you buy a game you don’t expect it to have these sorts of issues. I do like the gameplay as it used the rules for the tabletop game and it’s cool being able to see all the different teams and being able to use them without having to fork out money to buy the model kits. The online is super fun when it works, and the single-player campaign was welcoming but nothing revolutionary. The asking price for the game on PS5 is £34.99 which I think is a bit steep for the current state of the game, on Steam it’s £24.99 which is more reasonable. Blood Bowl 3 sadly falls too short of the touchline this time around and for these reasons, I’m giving it a 5 out of 10 as it fell too short of the line.
Grab your copy here https://www.bloodbowl-thegame.com/home
This review was only possible thanks to a code being sent from the publisher, this is in no way a form of advertisement, but an opinion of a product.
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