Recent reviews by Seilgrank

The review by Cazamus (https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/profiles/76561197975126621/recommended/1582290/) is fairly accurate. I'd add that the controls don't feel very good and the hitboxes don't feel very accurate. I personally wouldn't recommend this game at any price point.

Great idle/incremental game with no microtransactions. The only downside is how short it is, but you really can't complain about that because it's completely free!

The "Hidden Cats in" series are among the best hidden object games on Steam. Multiple play modes, multiple levels and unlocks, and decent controls and search mechanics. If you enjoy this style of game, I strongly recommend this title and the others like Hidden Cats in London, Paris, New York, etc.

I very nearly bought this game while it was on sale and had a time limited "Play for free!" of a few days. Unfortunately, all of my enjoyment that was leading me towards the purchase went out the window when I hit level 20 in the middle of an event and got a pop-up that told me that I'd reached the level cap, then proceeded to boot me back to the character select screen so fast that I was barely even able to read the message. The thrill of leveling up was quickly replaced by the disappointment of losing all the loot from the event I was in. I had not seen it mentioned anywhere the the free weekend came with a level cap. Whoever thought it was a good idea to surprise players with that probably cost them more sales than mine.
"That sucked, but maybe I should still buy the game?", I thought. Then I realized that if they're okay with using strategies like this to mislead or lie to me in the hopes that I'll buy the game, what can I expect if I do buy it? Right now the cash shop and Battle pass seem optional. But now I can't trust that they won't do things to force me to buy them later. Am I going to get to max level on one character and get the message "Sorry, but you must buy the Battle Pass to get more than one character past level 20!" or something equally shady? No idea and I don't plan on finding out.
It used to be that I previously had so much trust in Blizzard that I would buy their games at full price without needing to know anything more than it was from Blizzard. It's a shame they've fallen so far that I now won't even risk buying their games at a 50% discount because I can't be sure it's worth it.

Bad story and translations. Almost no game mechanics are explained to you initially and far too many tips and explanations happen in the middle of combat when you can't read them. The combat doesn't feel good and you find yourself constantly getting knocked down or stunlocked. Maybe that's because I don't fully understand the combat, but that just leads me right back to my 2nd point.

Even if you follow the instructions to the letter in the tutorials, things still don't work like they should.
Added 10g of salt to the pot of water? It now has 0. Add 10 more? It's at 0. Add 5g? Now it's at 0. Dump the pot and start again. Now it works and adds the salt.
Pour 300ml of tomato soup into a deep plate? Cool. Now the plate pours 500ml onto the floor without being moved or tipped. Repeat. Repeat. Fill and rush it to the serving area while the 500ml countdown is still going before the soup vanishes? Success!
Did you try to open an oven in a kitchen? Because they told you to? You idiot. Now a fish has merged with a pan and torn the oven door off it's hinges. That'll be a costly repair. For attempting to open a door.
I'm sure some people will say, "Wacky physics are part of the simulator genre! It's part of the fun!". Yeah, sometimes. But they can't be so 'wacky' that you can't actually play the game.
Pass on this one.

The playtime for this review was on Desktop mode, not in VR.

I don't recommend this game as it currently is. It seems like it could have potential as a heisting game, but there are too many issues with it right now.

The biggest is the physics. Stuff goes flying all over the place when you barely bump it. It can be very, very difficult to drop loot in the capture zone. Things get caught on one another and can't be moved.

I've also had issues with some of the objectives, like to steal a large bathtub that literally is too big to get out of the room. Or to deliver Christmas presents which then clipped through the wall.

Overall, while this game might possibly be better in VR, it has a way to go before I can recommend buying it.

The base gameplay seems like it could be fun, but it's constantly interrupted by mini-cutscenes (for lack of a better term). I don't know why they think they need to disable your player controls and take control of your camera for 5 seconds every time you trigger a button but it really ruins the flow of the game. Worse, powerups and coins that drop disappear after a few seconds and the timer for this doesn't pause during these forced mini-cutscenes. So you kill an enemy, they drop loot, then you lose control of the game while watching your freshly dropped loot slowly disappear and you can't do anything about it.

I'd assumed this annoying game mechanic would only be in the tutorial missions (and it still sucks there), but upon entering the first stage of story mode the very first thing they had me do was press a button that triggered a mini-cutscene that showed a bridge forming so I could move on. I'm 2 seconds into the mission. Is this really necessary? Couldn't that bridge just be there at the start of the mission?

Constant loss of player control is not good game design. This game might be fun otherwise, but I'll probably never know.

If you're a fan of Horde shooters like Vermintide 2 or Left 4 Dead, you'll probably enjoy this one. One of my favorite improvements it makes over Vermintide is a "toughness" bar that acts somewhat like a regenerating shield, reducing the melee damage you take based on how much toughness you have left. This helps mitigate one of my complaints with Vermintide: enemies spawning behind you and chipping away at your health.

The bad news is that this is still a Fatshark game, so expect a lack of support for disabilities such as proper subtitles for gameplay. It also has the usual Fatshark problems of abilities and items being poorly or incorrectly labeled, confusing or improperly explained mechanics, and tedious interface design such as waiting to load in to and walk around a hub instead of just being able to access what you want through a menu.

If you like this style of game, I'd recommend buying it on sale.

Edit 4: June 2024. Game still crashes. No, I'm not using any mods. Still no offline mode. I had to wait 30 seconds to "find a game" when I tried launching an invite-only match. The gameplay still revolves around juggling stupid buffs. Which would you rather be doing in an action-based game? Shooting and running? Or watching your buffs and doing pointless actions to gain and refresh them constantly? If Overkill made a car you'd probably have to solve a Sudoku every time you want to turn left. Cloakers still run through walls to get you. But, hey! We've got an "Unready" button now!

Edit 3: Even now that the servers are relatively stable, the game is still so buggy and unfinished that I can't recommend it. I'm playing it a lot, but that's because I've already been conned out of my money.
I've had heists crash multiple times as I'm entering the exit zone.
I've failed heists because it wouldn't let me pick up the bots when they're downed (no interact popup) and THE BOTS DON'T PICK EACH OTHER UP WHEN DOWNED.
I've had guards spot broken cameras through walls.
I've been caught in stealth while playing solo because it's always online and I lagged slightly.
I've killed Dozers only to be unable to get the health pack they dropped because it's clipped into the floor.
And so much more. The sheer number of bugs and steps backwards from Payday 2 are a joke. Sequels to games are supposed to learn from and iterate on the previous entries, not get worse.

Edit 2: 4 days later and the servers are still down over 80% of the time. I can occasionally get a game in during the morning, but then the servers are completely inaccessible for the rest of the day. I do no recommend buying this game at any price point. I'd get a refund if I was able to.

Edit: It turns out that "10 minutes now waiting" was just the very small tip of the iceberg. At the time of this edit the servers have now been overloaded for around 22 hours. I have been unable to even play a solo match for an entire day.

I no longer recommend paying full price for this game, even if they fix it to the point of being decent. I'd currently recommend waiting for a deep discount, and possibly not buying it at any price point if they don't enable an offline mode.

--------------------------

Original review:

As many others have said, this game is currently a huge disappointment and I cannot recommend buying it at this time.

There are no number stats for weapons.
Many skills are poorly worded and have vague language like "a chance for x to happen".
There is no voice chat. There is no text chat before or after games.
Many game mechanics are poorly explained or unexplained altogether.
There is no server browser, so you can't seek out games that match your playstyle.

It's always online. Meaning you can't pause a solo game. Heck, you can't even start a solo game if the servers are overloaded. I actually had time to type this review because I've literally spent 10 minutes now waiting to start a solo game to test some skills.

There are plenty of good things about Payday 3 as well, but I'm not going to get into them here. Payday 2 also had a rough launch but they eventually learned from the issues and improved many, many aspects of that game. I expect they'll probably do the same with Payday 3 but they shouldn't have been making those same mistakes again in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I'm mostly enjoying the game (when I can actually play it instead of "waiting for a match" of solo play...) and I expect that it will eventually get good enough to earn a positive review. And when it gets to that point it can have that positive review, but right now it hasn't earned it.