I don't know how to feel about it. I had more fun playing this game than i had playing the 2 hours of Payday 3 before i refunded it but i still found myself going back to Payday 2.

It may become a great game eventually but right now for that price it's like a 5 out of 10.


Here are my goods, bads and in-betweens:

Control multiple characters in a heist

Better allied AI pathfinding and intelligence than Payday (usually)

More randomized heists than Payday

Loose loot you pick up gets merged into a bag when you collect enough (more realistic than Paydays loose loot but more bags to carry)

- Guns and characters get unlocked by leveling up (which is not too different to Paydays heist rewards) but guns have set sights and attachments. You have no way of customizing your loadout the way you would in...well... Payday.

- There are no perks or skills you unlock by leveling up. Your entire playstyle is bound to the equipment you bring. Which you unlock randomly. This not only eliminates the need of planning before doing a heist but makes the gameplay feel more arcade-like. Select and equip your characters, do the heist, repeat. The Reward = some skins maybe.

- gun sound is a a bit mushy and lacks punch


-/ The gameplay loop is not too different to a Payday heist but has a few key differences.

Going in loud is not too different to Payday. You've waves of enemies you fend off until you can extract with your loot.

Stealth gameplay however is where the differences are notable and (in my opinion) not for the better.
You have guards patrolling the area but instead of taking them out and answering the radio to avoid triggering the alarm you sneak up to them push em down and cuff them. And there is no limit to how many of them you can cuff.
You could clear an area of 20 guards and no alarm is going to trigger.
So what does trigger an alarm?

gun shots (no silencer)
being spotted (obviously)
killing or destroying a total of 3 guards/cameras (???????????)

You can deactivate cameras by turning off the monitor. Why do i need to turn it off if no guard is still around to watch the monitor? In Payday you could use those cameras to your advantage but here you basically beeline to the camera, turn it off then clear the guards.

I can get behind the idea that when 3 cameras get destroyed the operator may get a bit suspicious but when you shoot a guard then someone knows that something is wrong but when 20 guards are cuffed in an alleyway then that's okay?

And it is way too easy to clear the guards. You can have a brick as equipment that has a few seconds cooldown.

Throw brick > Guard walks to brick > cuff guard > move guard away > repeat

Congratulations, you completed the heist.


-/ They have a rougelike campaign mode that i won't go into detail about. Not a big fan of roguelikes. But that's not the problem. The problem is the god awful voice acting... especially of the main character... which you are forced to play. There are 3 "different" campaigns and all of them are his campaign with different settings. Animations are so stiff and voice acting so generic that i'm not sure if this is some AI generated mess. From the writing to the voice acting to the animations. Just god awful. It's so bad i recommend to buy the game, experience that trash for yourself and refund it afterwards.

payday 3 if it was good:

This game is a hoot. The campaign is a fun challenge that is dynamic enough that each attempt feels like a fresh experience. One of these days I'm going to take ol' Chuck down!!! Multiplayer is fun, too! There is a nice mix of options, and who doesn't love pretending to be Danny Trejo?!