Recent reviews by RandomIdiot

He did it again! It's 2025 and you sell us new Horse Armour DLC again, as part of the Deluxe edition, Todd! You lil' Scamp rapscallion, you! You're like an abusive ex we all keep returning to at this point.

PS: But who am I kidding, I already bought it.
PPS: And if I couldn't buy it, I probably would've sold my kidney.
PPPS: And if I couldn't sell my kidney, I'd sell someone else's kidney.
PPPPS: Well this is clogging up another 120GB on my m2 SSD now for the next few years. Thanks, Todd.
PPPPPS: Hats off to Virtuous.
PPPPPPS: Still rooting for Skyblivion, too!
PPPPPPPS: You are over-encumbered.

- Intel i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz
- RTX 3080, 2560x1440 @ 144hz
- 32GB RAM
- Win10

- Great graphics and performance
- Beautiful uniquely designed locations; areas in the game feel completely different
- Memorable locations from the previous games (some areas are relocated); lots of returning characters
- The game is pretty huge overall and more importantly it's a full open world experience
- Fantastic, rich story with incredible depth and dark themes; old STALKER fans will not be disappointed
- Decent replayability with several factions to support for different endings
- Gun mechanics and general gameplay are very good, but do keep in mind that the FPS gameplay leans to arcade
- Stealth is actually well done and very viable in the game, but patch 1.1 made Stealth a little too easy; I can frequently take out entire groups of enemies without them realizing I attack them
- There are a lot of unique weapons, though most come down to slightly better stats plus special attachments
- The game had some bugs at launch, but the overall state of the game is very polished
- Developer dedication of early patch waves has polished the game even further right after launch

- Unfortunately you can't continue your save after the ending; I hope we see this fixed in patches or mods
- Tied to the above, a few zones are inaccessible because they are used for the final missions
- Some faction relations are weird, such as that Malachite hates you if you side against Ward
- Many stash areas are designed like noob traps that spawn enemies if you reach the stash; can get a bit tedious
- It is unfortunate how even in a completely different engine, just like in the old STALKER games weapons and bodies can sometimes glitch underground until you load a savegame; physical interactions and placements seem to be a weak point in the way physics in STALKER games is coded
- GSC sticks to using a few enemies in unreachable positions; I cry at night about the guns I cannot loot
- Always found it weird how anomalies themselves don't spawn artifacts; only specific anomaly areas do
- English voice acting sounds like very unnaturally clear sounding English; it's better to use Ukrainian voices
- Default key bindings are not always logical and long press quick use buttons are a strange choice

The game had a few issues at launch, ranging from random weapons appearing in your hands, a few side quests being partially broken and savegames sometimes not loading unless you restarted Steam and cleared your %Temp% folder. Practically all of the big issues are fixed now and none of these issues ever broke the game. People who grossly overexaggerate about performance issues are likely people with older hardware, people who installed the game on a HDD instead of SSD or people who haven't updated their GPU drivers in a while. There's even people who complain about getting 60FPS when the hardware requirements list it as target FPS. For comparison, with my rig I have only experienced one single crash to desktop in all my hours played (and twice I locked up the game because if you glitch out of bounds through a Vortex anomaly by accident, that can happen).

If you remember PC gaming 20 years ago and for example the launch of Shadow of Chernobyl during Windows Vista era, or the even buggier launch of Clear Sky, or the extremely tough DirectX 7, 9 and 10 performance changes between 1999-2007, then the launch issues STALKER 2 had pale in comparison. Make absolutely no mistake, STALKER 2 is an extremely stable game if you meet the minimum system requirements.

STALKER 2 plays really well. It's a bit generous with guns and resources, but then this speaks to its arcade-style nature. Once you get suits to start using artifacts, that's when you'll soon take on mid- and lategame enemies. Up until then you'll likely just stick with an AKM-74S and the best Shotgun you have. Hunts for stashes are generally always nice. General stashes will give you a decent chunk of basic resources, though they can at times lack a story to their placement in the world. However, later in the game most stashes will have a bit of a story tied to them and it's nice to find stashes that also have some more specialized rewards nearby. You'll likely stick with an AKM-74S for a large part of the game due to ammo economy. As you play through the game, mutants can be a bit challenging early on for new players as they can come across as bullet sponges if you don't have decent weapons. With that said, shotguns always solve your mutant problems.

Having beaten the game, I absolutely loved how each stage of the game feels very different and the unique locations help with that a lot. Skif also grows from a rookie who wants answers to a true veteran STALKER who will decide what is best for the Zone.

While the story has a lot of memorable moments, the story segments involving Strider are really strong. We are purposely made to care about a character that won't survive, because after he dies and you later speak with his "consciousness", you are meant to feel that it's up to Skif what happens next. You cannot save everyone, but you can decide what will happen to the Zone and the legacy of its mysteries. To me, it's magnificently depressing scientific horror themes resonate with other great games like Half-Life and I loved every second of it.

It's also quite sad how you uncover how some characters, like Faust, are misguided and used by others. The agendas of the various characters and factions are quite intriguing and come neatly together in later parts of the game.

This is a very wel polished game that does not disappoint. I remember how Shadow of Chernobyl (Chornobyl) was synonymous with how buggy Windows Vista was at launch, but patience to tweak settings and updates overtime eventually made those products great. STALKER 2 only launched with minor issues of which most of them had easy workarounds. And most issues seem to be fixed already. Even all the negative points I name in this review are just small improvements I wish to see, but they don't take anything away from the experience.

For me, STALKER 2 is one of the most complete FPS experiences I've had in so many years. The game is wonderful. It's incredibly dark themes and eerily inviting areas keep drawing me in. Not only is this my own favourite game of this year, but I'd say we have been gifted with one of the best FPS sandbox games we've ever had to date I fully recommend this game to every PC gamer..

I hope we get to see more of GSC and of STALKER in the future.
Now get out of here, Stalker!

Thank you for making this game. STALKER is one of my favourite game series and the experience offered is unlike any other game out there. The situation in Ukraine has made development of this game and your lives difficult. The current situation in Ukraine is not talked about enough amongst us gamers. Nobody deserves to go through what Ukrainians are going through for over 1000 days now.

GSC, you guys are awesome and I'm glad to support you and to be privileged to play your amazing games. Stay strong, you are my heroes!

RIP Volodymyr Yezhov.

- Intel i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz
- RTX 3080, 2560x1440 @ 144hz
- 32GB RAM
- Win10

Cosmoteer is an incredible space fleet sim/RPG. Have you ever played old flash space sim games like Flashtrek (specifically Broken Mirror)? Imagine a game like that but on steroids where you are able to fully custom build your own ships and create a fleet of them to dominate a galaxy. Want to build one big flasgship of doom with as many guns as possible? You can! Want to build a ship armed with shields and then build a second one as a railgun sniper to pick off enemies before they can even do damage to you? You can! Want to swarm enemies with lots of small ships? You certainly can.

Obviously some types of ship configurations will be more practical than others, but then again most ships have a type of ship they are probably not going to do well against, either. There is a type of balance at work that everything in the game can be good if used right.

Multiplayer has an alive community (that still deserves to be much bigger) and allows you to see build wonders such as the "Railgun Fidget Spinner", the "Wide Plank of Deck Cannons" and "Ion-Laser-Ships-That-Cut-Your-Ship-Apart-In-Seconds". It also has a very interesting Star Wars mod that might be worth checking out for some.

As a special mention: the music in this game is beyond phenomenal. Cosmoteer is worth getting for the perfect audio space vibes alone.

When you start out, the game can be a bit overwhelming in singleplayer if you are new, but with a few easy tips you'll quickly be on your way.

1. Your first ship should have lots of shields and armour so it can take hits. Build more (heavy) lasers, deck cannons and/or missiles for weapons.
2. Try to use extra armour panels up front in weaving patterns per row (so the next row should be offset by 1 block)
3. A flak cannons and point defense system or two in between your front armour can make a huge difference in taking out enemy projectiles
4. Use separate crew roles and bunkrooms for your Cockpit/Bridge crew. Only assign them to Command modules and running power for it (both on priority 10). Then add one extra crew member to the bunkroom(s). This ensures your command rooms are always running.
5. Follow the above logic for other ship modules. If you are efficient with this, you can run ships with about half the recommend crew.
6. At first it seems not very useful, but investing in moving walkways improves the workrate of your crew if you allow them to follow "a circular pattern". It makes a huge difference in keeping shields and weapons fully charged.
7. You can build a second ship when you have the fame for around 100 crew capacity. You could run your main at 80 crew (with workload estimations for 160) and then start putting the rest in a secondary ship.
8. Your second ship can be anything, but variety is key. Having an early Ion Laser, Railgun or Nuke boat alongside your main "Laser/Deck Cannon Shield board" can help dish out heavy damage on the flanks of enemies, while your main ship tanks hits.
9. Lategame you will face great threats including huge ships with lots of shields and strong weapons, or ships that are faster than you and stick close to damage you with Ion Lasers. The best solution is to use smart tactics:

- If your ship is slower than enemy ion laser ships, lure them to an asteroid, angle them towards it and then move forward so they back up into the asteroid and get pinned.
- Abuse enemy movement pattern gaps to take out enemies one by one. Engage at distance to avoid as much enemy fire as possible. Aggro enemies then move backwards a bit.
- After doing some damage, back off from enemy stations/defenses. The AI repairs slow, so if you repeat this you can avoid taking heavy (or all) damage.
- Keep in mind that enemies prioritize the closest enemy, so keep your secondary long range ships ready while your main ship draws aggro.
- Save often. If you take a big loss, just reload. It's not worth spending time gathering resources for repairs.

Despite the game being excellent, there are some things that could've made it even better.
- The singleplayer fame requirements to hire new crew are a strange bottleneck. It slows/halts player progression and forces tougher quest completion.
- While there are a lot of ship components, it feels like obvious additions are missing such as fully spherical shields, large multi-direction thrusters or 1x1, 2x2 storage facilities or 2x3 bunkrooms.
- Speaking of shields, due to them only covering one cardinal direction and requiring specific doorway access, you can't place shielding in a neat circle. This means you always have to plan shield configurations ahead.
- Large shields hanging off the ship and being blocked by armour means they aren't very useful. Many players and AI ships will instead use small shields for their ability to penetrate through armour.
- An immersive story or "cinematic exposition" for singleplayer would've gone a long way. It's one of few weak points of Cosmoteer.
- I'm missing a crazy gameplay aspect, like close combat ship builds. How cool would it be if you could board ships and fight with crew? Maybe introduce a race that specializes in it?
- I'm missing something in the sim/RPG department as well. For example, destroyed ships leave their crew stranded in space until they die. What if you could take them on board and recruit them? There is more potential here.

Cosmoteer is an excellent space sim/RPG with lots of freedom. The ability to build ships and maintain a fleet all while listening to an incredible music score makes this game an experience you won't soon forget. It's one of the most entertaining space sims/RPG games in a while and that's saying a lot since I compared it to old flash games. It's such a good game that you just want to see even more additions to it (my criticisms are meant to come across as lost opportunities).

I strongly recommend this game, inclujding to people who aren't fans of 2D space(fleet) sim/RPG games and I hope the future has more Cosmoteer in store for us.

- Intel i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz
- RTX 3080, 2560x1440 @ 144hz
- 32GB RAM
- Win10

A fantastic game, precisely in between Vampire Survivors and Diablo II and what an excellent combination it is. You play with one of six characters at a time (who have lovely little bits of dialogue in between playing levels) and you have to complete all acts. As of the time of writing there are only two acts available and the game is in development. I am eagerly awaiting Act 3 (and more)!

All characters have specific types of items they can equip. They all have a mostly unique skilltree so you can try to build them with bonuses for specific builds. The current level cap is at 36, perhaps it will be increased as more content releases. You have a classic store to sell or buy items. Characters also come with different slot availability for types of blessings. Some are considered strikes, others are dashes and so forth. It's up to you to try what works best, but I'm personally always happy to use Fire Trails from Summer and Time Field from Time and stack my items full of Dash and Duration buffs.

In its current state the game is a bit easy (without difficulty modifiers). Overall you can get fairly decent control over your level ups and blessings, meaning that if you use the right items you can practically ensure what build options you are going to encounter. It's rare to have bad luck (when using proper builds). Thankfully, this means this is not really a luck-based Roguelike and that's a good thing. The game is easy to pick up and get immersed in. The sheer variety of playstyles alone can keep you going.

The pixel art is very nicely done (the character portraits and god avatars really stand out, you can really tell the personalities in the designs).

I also like the various bits of humour and references with unique items. Quite a lot of them aren't even useful (some outright do nothing), but making me laugh with a cheeky reference is worth just as much, if not more, as getting a nice item drop.

The game is absolutely lovely and a blast to play.

- The constant "melodial water drip camp music loop" gets a bit on my nerves, even if it is a creative application of music
- I will say as a criticism that half of the skill trees contain fairly useless upgrades
- It's missing item upgrade systems (e.g. socketed items and gems, the ability to make an item a more powerful version or the ability to swap a stat bonus/keyword for another)
- I'd say the game is screaming for item sets as well
- Having specific areas where you can find side quests/bosses or secrets (a la Vampire Survivors) would be a lovely addotion next to the main story
- If you ask me we lack the option to block a god you don't want from appearing (Alterations would then still be useful to search for better blessings)
- A setting to allow randomized enemy spawns (if only Minions or Elites) would make the game even more engaging
- Perhaps once all acts are released we can also get more difficulties to reset the game and continue leveling and find even crazier items?

For the record, asides from the water drip music this isn't heavy criticism, these are just suggestions to add even more depth to the game.

Just want to get out of the way that other than the Diablo II: Resurrected remake, Death Must Die is the best Diablo 2-like game that has been released since Diablo 2 itself... while being a completely different genre of game. Honestly, Death Must Die is looking to be my favourite game I've purchased in the past year. It does precisely what every game should: deliver a game with an interesting story, excellent gameplay and a unique visual design. It's incredible how well this game is made. It's hard to find games with as much identity as Death Must die.

All other Roguelike (and Diablo-clone) developers out there, take notes: this developer is doing everything precisely right. Not to mention that Death Must Die is sold incredibly cheap as well.

I can recommend every single PC gamer this fantastic game. That's how far I'm going with my praise.

- Intel i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz
- RTX 3080, 2560x1440 @ 144hz
- 32GB RAM
- Win10

Very much inspired by other Roguelike Deckbuilders such as Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon. You have quite a few characters to unlock and play with and given the large variety of ship attack/support modules and treasures, there's a lot of possible ways to build your ship.

You pick a ship, you pick a character that determine a bonus or ship behaviour and then you alternate between doing battles and looking for upgrades/shop upgrades. Rinse and repeat until you beat all the bosses. Level up to unlock different ships and characters. The battles involve you trying to outdamage the enemy per lane, with a fuel resource allowing you to dodge lanes and shields recharging between battles allowing you to soak up extra damage per round.

But as charming as the game is overall, I do have a few gripes with it and most stem from how luck-based Roguelike Deckbuilders work in general.

- The difficulty is all over the place and there is little to no balance. There are bosses with so much guard you cannot possibly break them before they use their special attack. There's also a lot of super weak and super strong generic enemies. Especially early on it can be quite challenging.

- The music is a bit lacklustre, giving off a mellow "Space Western" vibe. Huge missed opportunity for more relaxing trance or tense techno vibes to go along with the flashy laser cannons in battles.

- Lonestar follows the trend of difficult luck-based Roguelike (Deckbuilder) games. This causes the following issues: A. you have to play for quite a while to slowly unlock all characters, ships and other attainable bonuses before you can even expect to play with good builds, B. a lot of the upgrades you encounter aren't upgrades at all and are worse than your starting equipment and reward choices are often a gamble with a high chance of giving you nothing or or something bad and C. to beat the more difficult levels/bosses you will still need to rely on a good bit of actual luck during your runs.

Lonestar is much more of a luck-based Roguelike game like Darkest Dungeon, where good runs are fully dependent on a rare streak of good luck. To me luck/gambling are not fun game elements. My feedback to developers of such games is that diluting progression and making players rely on being lucky is just delaying the gameplay for the player. This actually makes it less appealing for me to play more of the game. If I have more control over assets at my disposal I feel a lot better about myself than knowing that the game just ended my run early because it refused to provide me with enough boons I need to challenge the boss of a level. Why would I even bother attempting the final boss if I know I don't have the resources to take it on? There's a reason most physical card games rely a lot on "search" cards because if those didn't exist you just become dependent on the luck of drawing things in the right order. This "searchability" is also a must for Roguelike games to prevent cheesing the player with luck, it's not very fun to constantly get dealt a bad hand. Unfortunately as far as I've played Lonestar so far, there seems to be no "searchability" whatsoever.

My gripes with Roguelike Deckbuilders that rely on luck aside, overall it's a well-made game. If you like Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon there's a fair chance you will also enjoy Lonestar. But just keep in mind that it falls more to the luck category with a serious lack of control over your assets, like Darkest Dungeon. If you do not like luck-based Roguelike games, then I cannot recommend you this game. Personally, I am not enjoying Lonestar as much as I thought I would with 2 hours of playtime. I'm very much on the fence on giving a final recommendation or not. It's not a bad game. However, it being so reliant on luck-based gameplay pushes me over the edge and not recommend this game (unless you specifically like the luck aspect of these types of games, failing dozens of times and just having random builds to see how far you get every single time).

- Intel i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz
- RTX 3080, 2560x1440 @ 144hz
- 32GB RAM
- Win10


+ The dev deserves credit for trying the North Africa/Italy setting and supporting a large unit variety and greater variety of anti-tank options throughout the various stages of the game, if we overlook the fact that this completely bites them in the ass with trying to balance the game.

+ Visuals and performance look alright if we ignore the lacklustre explosion effects and horrendous UI.

- The UI/UX is absolutely hopeless. CoH3 takes the cake in just how crap UI can be. Obvious issues being the Pop Cap icons being in an illogical place, I lose track of it all the time, build orders and the means to cancel them occuring outside of the UI of the building, unit selections are doubled (inside the right hand UI window and as part of all your unit icons in the bottom center), the minimap is too big, the right hand UI window is too big and doesn't ever get filled up with full entities, the unit cards are too big and unnecessary and the zoom function is limited. I can go on, but bottom line: this is how you kill a Strategy/RTS game.

- AI is very unintelligent, but just gets bonuses to spam more things than you have. They seem to try to spam grenades and anti-tank weapons at every opportunity they get, yet have the biggest trouble using their own tanks to fight your tanks. They behave like tourists trying to visit all corners of the map regardless of where you place your units.

- Some gameplay choices are werid, such as how you build buildings from your HQ instead of Engineers and how those visually spawn some workers... why have this at all?

- Ingame microtransaction store elements were already a warning flag but lo and behold! They nowhave released expansion packs to sell you new Battlegroups, while the main game is still unfinished garbage. You get roughly 100-500 points per microtransaction challenge by the way, while most things cost like 25K including Battlegroups. None of this UTTER ♥♥♥♥ should be part of the game.

- The North Africa campaign is quite short, it's almost more like an extended tutorial. The Italy campaign feels like a restricted Empire At War gamemode. They could have done so much with this: A. make it like a Total War game B. make it like full 4X gameplay C. make an in depth HoI4/Paradox simulation game or D. just go with a sector map like Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, to keep it a simple RTS?

- It seems the Italy campaign is bugged. While completing the sports event with my artillery company, I was also building two armored companies. The armored companies get built in 1 turn (it's meant to take 2 turns) and get flagged as units that have not yet taken any actions at the end of the turn. However, they do not exist on the map. They are also not in the building queue. The game in this turn cannot be saved and pressing end turn twice just "freezes" my turn. I don't know what the exact trigger is, but I refuse to redo my campaign and consider it unplayable.

- Also as per a 2025 review on Skirmish mode, the game has just become that much more awful. I decided to see if things have improved the slightest, but it has only gone downhill. And I am not joking. I play with two Standard Allied AI versus three Standard Axis AI on Montherme, just to get a feel for how things are. And HORY SHET did this become the worst RTS game I have ever played. I created some infantry and tech up to tanks... the enemy starts spamming vehicle units my way that they can't own yet. Whatever, no problem, I'll just pull back a bit and oh... they just swarmed my allied AI who aren't doing anything and now they send units over my bridge. No problem, I'll just block those off with tank traps and barbed wire and then push ahead and block the middle off. This worked until it didn't, when the AI decided to go all around, spam all their artillery at all my units at once and then spammed more artillery at the bridge tank traps only to repair it within 6 seconds with a dozen Pioneer units. Okay... I guess I'll rebuild my army. Oh how nice, the enemy AI has already instantly rebuilt the bridge before I could place any new tank traps, while I am still rebuilding my army anyway. Okay, I got my army up again... oh, the enemy is now sending an unending stream of tanks my way until literally I am stuck in my base, spamming artillery whenever they are allowed to use it to add insult to injury. I don't know who decided the AI needed to be reworked to work like this but this is obviously one of the worst RTS games someone ever devised. I'm done with this game.

Replacing my prior review, my 2025 experience makes me painfully aware that I never should've bought into this game. This isn't just the worst CoH game. This is the worst RTS game ever released by human hands. From disastrous UI to unplayable gameplay... who in their right mind would want to play this?

This game is an INSULT to CoH fans and PC Gamers alike. Developer should be ashamed of this pile of garbage.

Sony, if you want to sell this game on another platform called Steam because you can piggyback on Steam's userbase, then YOU should be the one to adapt and use Steam's services, not the other way around where you force Steam and Steam users to link with PSN. There is zero reason to do so, other than that you want the user data on your own network.

I'm a PC Gamer. I use Steam. I don't want to use your PSN service; especially when taking into account your major data breach history, which another reviewer has kindly summarised. I get that you put it in your requirements from the start, but that doesn't mean I'm happy with PSN. Do the right thing then and make it optional, or something.

This game is good enough to recommend, but PSN is bad enough to not recommend!

Review changed to positive due to good faith after Sony's announcement to reverse course.

- Has a lobby system bug since release. You can't invite players on Friends Only. You must set it to Public, invite friends, then put it back on Friends Only.

- Default stratagem key bindings are on WASD and conflict with movement. I recommend you put the stratagem key bindings on directional arrow keys, so that when you start moving you can then use stratagems and continue moving.

- The game can be a bit challenging for solo players, as it doesn't scale. Playing with others is a major advantage. The game can go crazy on infinite spawning enemies and true enough, high difficulty gameplay where you just ignore most enemies is actually a valid strategy. Otherwise it comes down to a lot of resource management to deal with enemy waves.

- Visuals are decent, but the UI/UX is sometimes messy (e.g. unskippable post match screens, climb animation sensitivity near Resupply stratagem drop, replacing selected Stratagems in your lobby being unintuitive).

- The overhead map is a sector war between AI factions and players. The developers decide what happens and where the AI will strike. However, as we have once defeated Automatons, it was written in the stars that a new attack wave would be launched at Cyberstan. Meaning, to keep the game going, it seems we can't permanently defeat Automatons or Terminids. It's all a bit of fluff to push a dynamically told narrative, whereas succeeding or failing Major Orders makes no difference in terms of events the developers have planned.

- Game so far has frequent updates that add new content. New "Battlepasses" also give new content for players to unlock (farming super credits for free isn't difficult, just don't pay for super credits). Despite this, I will say I am against inclusions of mictrotransactions even if it's likely included to help prolong the game's (multiplayer) lifespan.

- Helldivers 2 went even harder on the whole "Starship Troopers parody" aspect. If you like that kind of humour, then you will like HD2. Even small details like the loading screen tips are hilarious. Bonus tip from me: look at the backside of the first billboard in the tutorial.

- Shooting aspect is quite decent, with many different types of weapons. Crouching, proning and diving to the ground is a thing. Sadly, jumping is not (but you can unlock the jump pack stratagem). You can shoot in third-person, switch shoulder camera sides in third person zoom and you can also switch to first-person while zoomed in. The only downside is that due to the difficulty of the game and availability of many weapons, there are a lot of underpowered weapons you should avoid.

After having played for some months, I would say that the game is not as great as some people hyped, but at the same time I think most people will find this a very enjoyable coop shooter experience. It does set a good example for the quality games should be released in and how developers can continue to maintain their game with updates.

The PSN drama forced me to not recommend it. If your company wants to take advantage of Steam's userbase to instantly find a target audience, then don't force those users to use your own user database on your platform. We like Steam for a reason, it's by far the best gaming storefront and gaming library available. Developers, publishes, we don't want to use your external launchers or sign up for accounts on your external platforms just because you want our data.

Review changed to positive due to good faith after Sony's announcement to reverse course.

- Intel i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz
- RTX 3080
- 32GB RAM
- Win10
- 2560x1440 @ 144hz

- Written by a DW Pd2 veteran
- Long review

The odds were always against Payday 3 as Pd2 was a good game with lots of content. The community betrayals (microtransactions) tore its community apart. Had Starbreeze done a U-turn, a Pd2 resurgence was possible. Pd3 has so many issues that it's easier to summarize positives: but then I'd have no review for you. So, what went wrong?

Launching the game, it forces a Starbreeze Nebula account creation. Why? You don't need registered accounts to play a game. You could just recognise a new PlayerID, synch that to your database and allow players to synch with that ID on other platforms. The only reason to force a login is to collect player data or reach out to them for marketing purposes. Speaking of which...

"GAMESIGHT: Do you want to enable GAMESIGHT? It shows us how marketing campaigns are received, helping us to bring new players into the PAYDAY world."

Logging in, this is the first thing you get. If you release a game yet still want to investigate how to reach your target audience, then this implies you skipped your marketing analysis BEFORE working on the project. Then why did you launch the game? Nobody wants (marketing) pop-ups.

Also, there already is paid DLC.

- Keybindings are less multifunctional than Pd2. Granted, we don't have Hoxhud, but Starbeeze had years to learn from Hoxhud. You can't unbind keys, but you can double bind. As in, it can be both the main and alt binding. PC gaming standards are missing here.

- Inspecting loadouts, I see time went into allowing us to change our suit and gloves (wish it went into other aspects). You have to click twice on items to change loadouts for some reason.

- In the tutorial, a guard arrests me and I get booted back to the menu instead of resetting the tutorial. I am told to follow the guard, but the objective says I have to go past a door. It's a new mechanic to get escorted, why doesn't the objective explain this? Afterwards you have to create a distraction, which I was trying in the first place. Why are we having cookie cutter tutorials? Why can't I be rewarded for being smart?

- The manager's door access is odd. The objective tells you to grab him and I thought I had to make him follow me, but nothing happens. You have to grab hold of him and use him as a human shield and then go to the door. Why can't him following me work as well?

- A trade with the police takes place, but I grabbed hold of the manager just as the objective triggered. I couldn't put the manager down or throw him, I couldn't use the manager for a trade and I couldn't click any of the other hostages to trade.

- Looking into missions, we see a terrible UI decision: the missions bar in the bottom is filled with videos and missions you have to unlock in order. Players just want to select a mission and play it, why do we need weird slider cards in the bottom? Why should I unlock every mission in order? Why are there videos here? Why are you putting more clicks in between the player playing the game?

- There is no lobby chat and there is no offline mode. It can take minutes until you load into a game.

- In the bank heist (with bots), I had no silencer to take out a guard. I tried to melee, but he didn't die and shot me. Why can't you have a silencer by default? Why have melee if you can't down an enemy? Why can't you explain in your tutorial that you can't use melee?

- Police demand I free 2 hostages. The first hostage I freed ran out: no change. The second ran out and the counter went down to 1. I released a third: no change. One more: no change. And my time was up; I lost four hostages, but no deal was made.

- The AI isn't difficult: in Pd2 they rush into rooms or prepare ambushes, but the Pd3 AI roam looking for you and then stand still to take potshots at you. Most AI stands still in doorways. A lot of untied civilians were still roaming about so I guess civilian control is a lot less crucial than in Pd2, making the game feel very one-dimensional.

- Shooting itself feels like UE5 asset footage without recoil. The gun shakes in your hands as if affected by recoil, yet your aim is like a laserbeam. Shooting at distance, iron sights feel like a visual obstruction. Thanks to the laserbeam properties, you have no issues hitting enemies. That said, headshots don't seem to be the same one-hit kills as in Pd2, which slows the game down. Then I decided to have a shootout with snipers and accidentally got hit... which made me lose all my armour. And it doesn't regenerate. Could've told me in the tutorials.

- Enemies have this lightweight physics feel to them and easily collapse. Grenades feel weird: they produce a soft bang and a tuft of smoke that may do some AoE damage. Which is weird because in the tutorial you had to shoot explosive barrels which caused a minor explosion with a huge damage blast radius. Michael Bay would be confused by Pd3.

- Dye packs on money bags is nice, but wasn't part of the tutorials and I had no idea you can only intereact with a small portion of the bag to disable dye packs.

- Lockpicking/cracking by hand is a default thing now, but all it does is help give me carpal tunnel. Please learn from Hoxhud.

- The obvious elephant in the room is the lack of content compared to Pd2. It's inevitable it gets compared to it and without any clear roadmap, Pd3 already has a massive strike against it if players cannot expect content to match the same levels of quality and quantity.

it has been a while since I've seen an FPS as bad as Pd3 and Pd2 is a far superior game. Given the low player count, I can't see Starbreeze willing to continue Pd3 development (but prove me wrong). It will take a lot to fix this game. Maybe check in a few years what the status of Payday 3 is.

Payday 3 is just a tiny sequel swimming in a huge ocean, with a broken rudder, a broken engine, broken navigation and so forth: don't bother setting sail with this game.

What more can you want?

Baldur's Gate 3 has witty and funny writing. The story is compelling. There are inclusions and nods to the original Baldur's Gate characters. It looks good. It has the in depth mechanics of Larian that fit DnD really well. It has a completely revamped levelling system that is pretty much a simplified/shortened 5e system merged with Larian's mechanics that translate into a really practical leveling system. You can recruit extra characters (though based on a fixed base class). The voice actors take their job seriously. Karlach can break the 4th all in one of the most immersive ways I've seen a developer do before. Exploration is rewarding. There is a ton of replayability. You can play it just fine alone or with others. Cheese builds with Rogue-Fighter "Stealth Archer" builds are totally possible. You can totally steal everything in the game if you feel like it, even to the point of it affecting what characters would otherwise do in a cutscenes. Actions have fairly impactful consequences that feel like they matter. There are so many interesting interactions you can find. There are even custom animations for animal forms for sitting on a bench. You can kick Astarion in the nuts. There's no microtransactions in sight. It just goes on and on.

...No, literally. Since officially releasing their patches have added extra content after fan feedback/i] (and more Karlach) and that is considering the game was already excellently received to begin with.
I've had this since early access and at that point you could see how there was still work to do for Larian, but I could not predict that in 2023 a developer would care this much to deliver a fantastic game that they wanted to put effort in so the fans would enjoy it properly. It wasn't just their hope that we would enjoy their game, it was their goal to make us enjoy their game. Well, Larian, you sure overexceeded in every single way conceivable!

Larian Studios, thanks for taking the gaming community seriously. Our community is filled with parties who seek to make tons of money for as little amount of effort as possible... but your team is a shining light of pure brilliance.

Bit of a late review and for a while I wanted to make this a comprehensive one, but I think it's best to keep it brief.

The only downsides worth talking about are that yes, a few Mercs you may have expected to reappear in the game are missing and a few others look or sound a bit off. Also you might be mistaken for calling this a difficult game if you don't invest into upgrading your weapons (enemies can be quite brutal sometimes if you don't). Finally, the game does kind of push you to get a balanced group of Mercs early on and it can be a little bit annoying if one or more of the starting Mercs you wanted aren't available...

But other than that, it's a great Turn-Based Strategy game and more importantly: a worthy Jagged Alliance 2 successor. Sure, JA2 might still edge it out gameplay- and content-wise, but other than an outright 1:1 remake this game is about as close to a proper JA2 sequel as we'd ever get. To me it's important they got the core mechanics right, they came up with a reasonably interesting plot and yet it manages to be easy to pick up. There's no real learning curve and there's many ways to play. They put effort into making this a true Jagged Alliance experience and especially Ian Currie helped prove that even in today's age you can make a sequel to a hugely popular old game that set the bar for it's genre so high... and still give fans most of what they want and still be hugely successful. It looks great, it plays great and it does the franchise proud.

But more importantly than me liking this game, I just want to give a huge thanks and shoutout to Haemimont Games for putting in so much effort to make this a good game. I recommend Jagged Alliance 3 to all JA2 and all other Turn-Based Strategy fans (and all other gamers) alike!