Payday 2 was first released back in 2013 and has been a smash hit ever since, with constant updates for balancing and over 4 different skill system revamps, alongside expansions, DLC, and packs for suits and style. A game old enough to curse as much as the protagonists, it has finally received a full sequel in the form of Payday 3.
Continuing the heisting shenanigans of the main cast, sans a few members here and adding a few there, Payday 3 keeps the flow of the original story and aims to make it more cinematic and focused. With still frame cutscenes to set up each section of the story, Payday 3 moves more towards a story-focused title than the somewhat random feel of Payday 2 where the story was primarily told in the mission descriptions or dialogue in the maps.
But has this newest entry to the thievery kept up with the 1328 achievements of the first?
Put the Money in the Bag
Following the end of the previous game, Payday 3 starts with the gang out of money and out of luck. As long as they aren’t out of touch or out of time. With betrayals and thievery against the thieves, the Payday gang gets back together to recover their lost moolah and powah. And it all starts the same, with a small bank heist for some spending money.
Payday 3 starkly contrasts missions on offer for launch, though similar to how Payday 2 was originally released. 10 missions that’ll take around 4 to 6 hours to complete if you’re only doing them once. While Payday 2 started with 12, it is now at around 87 with the DLCs and whatnot included. Moving from such a roster of content to a slither of the length, Payday 3 could be a bit of a shock to players who only came into the series way later.
As for replayability, the Payday franchise thrives on that. Each mission can be done in stealth or loud, bar the second mission that is loud only. Offering a different approach to the objectives that can change on a dime, from lockpicking to burning the doors. There’s not much in the way of drills this time, removing the long-time meme of the second entry.
Payday is also a franchise where playing higher difficulties rewards you even more. With Payday 3, this has changed, but you can still get a good 30 hours out of this entry for what it has to offer before new content drops. But it is not at a point where I’d spend the over 200 hours I have in Payday 2.
Why Not? Nobody Ever Robs Restaurants
If you’ve played the other games in the series, Payday 3 will feel as familiar as the gloves you wear. If not, the best counterparts you can find land either in the stealth genre or the objective-based shooters.
Stealth gameplay consists of trying to stay hidden from guards and cameras, while disguising your actions as normal to everyone else. Most missions will see you picking keycards from belts, hacking computers, and gaining access to the secure rooms in the backs of the buildings. A recurring theme is that of getting the red keycard to find a 4-digit password to unlock a door to your loot.
Loud gameplay sees you blasting whenever you see fit. Gone are the cards and numbers, instead you get thermite to burn open doors or small drills for safes. Get your bags of loot and hold out against waves of cops and FBI before your getaway van or chopper arrives. Some of the missions will have progression blockers such as road billiards but they don’t stick around long after the first disable.
For both types of missions, you have to acquire a certain amount of loot to be allowed to leave, either four or more bags of cash or a particular item that you were sent in for. Each bag rewards more money for guns and their modifications.
Unlike the previous game, Payday 3 has done away with the traditional experience for levels systems. Now, you gain infamy points for completing challenges. This ranges from getting 10, 20, 50, and 100 kills with each weapon to completing each heist upwards of 250 times each. Other more intricate challenges see you doing missions with no kills or with a speedrun time limit.
With enough infamy points, you will gain a new level. These grant skill points to activate a range of skills in certain trees. You can focus on the lockpicking side of things, controlling the cameras of the level, or building a tough loud gunner to just blast your way through all the missions.
As Payday 3 has only just been released you can bet a mill that the skill system, alongside the challenges, will be updated or completely revamped down the line. There has been quite a bit of backlash to how it has shifted from the second game, where higher difficulties grant more experience, to now being much more of a grind fest of doing more inane tasks. While it isn’t the end of the world, it isn’t exactly smooth or user-friendly.
A single overkill difficulty match of Payday 2 could grant you dozens of levels, while in Payday 3, an overkill mission grants you one completion to a challenge and several steps to others. You’re lucky to get 1 or 2 levels per heist, if you’re keeping track of what challenges to do along the way.
Guns also gain experience for each completed heist, with a bit more based on difficulty, allowing you to buy better mods for them. This is quite an annoying mechanic, as each new gun is in its worst state, whereas previous guns you’ve levelled and modded will feel nicer to use.
You Play With Matches, You Get Burned.
The music of Payday 3 is full of energy and synthetic tunes to get you fueled to go on a gunning rampage. It amps up when you go loud and even higher when a wave is attacking you, but outside of fighting you’ll be walking alongside almost silence. While the OST is great as is usual for a Payday title, just like the others you’ll be missing out on it if you play it as purely a stealth game.
As Payday 3 is more of a game to play over and over again, the difficulty comes in the form of who you play with and the difficulty setting you choose. Normal is a good starting point and makes all the heists easy to do in solo or co-op play, while overkill can take a lot more time and is seemingly designed for three players. However, the AI can be easy to trick, with many bugs making some heists simple to do. Sadly, the difficulty does little to reward you in this release.
It is very sad to say that the launch of Payday 3 hasn’t been well received. At a mostly negative overall rating on Steam, with 29,715 reviews as of writing, it is far from the very positive rating of Payday 2 with 418,245 ratings. A lot of these negative reviews are around the new infamy structure, some terrible server stability, lack of solo-play in offline mode, no Crime.Net, missing features from the second game, and an ant-sized content pool when compared to Payday 2.
While the servers have been fixed a bit from launch, a lot of the other issues may take some time to rectify. While an offline mode was hinted at during the dev’s streams, many portions of the previous game might not come our way for a few months. Simple things such as a search function or even the pre-planning and blueprints of maps make this release feel more like Early Access than a full release. Though, at £34.99, you pay half a game for half a game.
I have little doubt that Starbreeze Studios will fix most of the issues. Payday 2 had so many fixes that, unsurprisingly, it is so well-loved. In time I can see Payday 3 reaching that standard, as its gameplay loop is a bit smoother and has taken steps to being more modernized than its decade-old predecessor. However, you might need to wait six months to a year to see all of what the season pass will offer, to see if it’s for you.
Overall, I’d give Payday 3 a tentative 7/10 for now. It is a fun romp with friends, both in stealth and loud variations. The maps can be both simple and complex depending on choice, with some quick clears and more in-depth burglaries. There are not a ton of unique features to be had, but this is a long haul, more is to come.
Payday 3 Trailer
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