Recent reviews by haych

This game suffers exactly from what Cult of the Lamb suffers from. Really nice art style that's visually appeasing, but it's EXTREMELY shallow and the gameplay feels super dated.

The gameplay is, you shoot... and dodge roll. And hold E sometimes along with dated inventory management. That's it. You don't get to expand on this at all or change it up. The game encourages you to use different ammo and such but anything outside the basic and elemental bullets are pretty much worthless. Either you can kill everything with little effort or enemies are bullet sponges because an enemy 7 levels above you spawned. There's also an extreme lack of enemy variety and all of the current ones feel similar.

It get's boring very, very quickly once you find out what the core loop is. Hard pass unless you like 1 hour of gameplay stretched out to 15+. I wish the devs the best as I don't think these issues would slide that easily.

Edit: I had a feeling I originally did see this game as 4 player co-op. They quietly shoved that under the rug and toned it down to 2 players. Doesn't really matter because co-op is basically: you're bored with your friend and co-op interaction is almost nonexistent.

This review isn't about the servers. They fixed that and any issues you still have with it are on your end.

For reference, I'm level 100 with just over 100 hours. I've played both The Heist and 2 on launch and for numerous hours going forward.

This game needed another year of development. Full stop. It's very clear Starbreeze is extremely close to bankruptcy and needed this game shoved out the door immediately. This was a very, very bad move on their behalf. The damage that this launch has done will most likely never recover to the pre-launch hype as this game is constantly bleeding players every single day. They knew they can do the modern gaming thing where you can "just patch it later" so why would they care? As it stands, Payday 2 has almost triple the number of active players to 3. I've seen threads upon threads saying that people are dropping 3 in general to pick up 2 again, and there's a good reason for this.

What fundamentally killed this game for almost everyone, outside technical issues, is the absolutely horrid challenge system they have in place currently to increase player level, or as I like to call it: the chore list.

In this game you don't get to play the way you want. Ever. You're going to play how Starbreeze wants you to and if you deviate in ANY way, you're punished by getting no XP. Oh you just stealthed the hardest heist in the game on overkill? Here's 300k and a slap in the face. What the actual hell were they thinking with this? The Heist had this figured out back in 2011, and 2 reinforced upon it. The devs have also said that they're "happy" with this current system and we may not see it revised for a long, long time. There is no negotiation, this system needs to be change immediately or this game will fail. It's not fun. It's tedious and creates this looming feeling that anything you do in the game has no reason behind it.

Fun fact! Did you know Starbreeze outsourced all their in-game models to a company that has only worked on bad mobile games? That's the reason why all the civvies look horrendous and the dozer has a brand new look not similar to The Heist or 2.


In Payday 2 / The Heist, armour exists to give you a brief advantage over the cops.

Health exists as a finite, extremely important resource that needed to be managed, armour needs to be closely monitored to protect it.

Armour constantly regenerates because you get shot an obscene amount of times over the course of a single loud heist.

If you run out of health, you’re in trouble, but still have a shot. If you’re extremely careful, you can lean on your armour to survive (with absolutely zero room for error). This was a fun gameplay mechanic that allowed for fun last minutes rushes and escapes by the skin of your teeth.

This doesn’t exist anymore.

Making both health and armour finite dilutes the importance of both. They’re basically both the exact same, why would I ever take health? It also gives the player no room for error when they run out of both.

In PD3 when out of armour and low on health, you are completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Your options are the following:

a.) Challenge the cops, get shot once, instantly die.

b.) Hide in a corner until the cops push you, instantly die.

In most modern shooters, your health will recharge to give you a chance in your next encounter, even if it’s slim. Payday 3 is PvE, and it makes no sense at all that it doesn’t give you the same grace as most PvP shooter games.

The new armour system doesn’t work, and worst of all, is less fun. It needs to change.


TLDR: Starbreeze messed up big time. I'll be putting this game away for a while but keeping a close eye on it. There's just no reason to keep playing when 2 exists. I'm sure this game will achieve something great like 2, but none of us want to wait 4-5 years to get there.

Also, turn off crossplay if you can. 99% of console players I matched with were legit braindead. They'll wait for the lobby timer to run out without readying and they'll hold you hostage by not exiting the level with everyone or not doing a damn thing all heist. Very cool Starbreeze! I'm so glad we don't have vote kick and you had to delay the launch patch for console regulation.

Add Latch and Candyman next. Instant buy from me.

Imagine being Sega, sitting on a gold mine of a franchise for 20+ years, and what do they do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, except for holding it hostage in their HQ basement. Even if Sega decides to do something now it's waaaay too late imo. They've been outdone 1000 times over.

Thank you Team Reptile and all the talented musicians for keeping one of my favourite games alive and making it even better. Personal indie GOTY contender that's far up there with PIzza Tower.

Definitely not Arkane's best work, get's repetitive pretty quickly but the music and characters are extremely well done. The dynamic between Colt and Julianna is always fun to listen to and watch them butt heads constantly.

Just google what's good and buy what you need if it's on sale. Majority of the weps in both this pack and the other have ton of bloat that never received proper buffs. The bow, blunderbuss, minigun, etc, they're all extremely weak and feel awkward/out of place. I can't see why you would use half these weapons when the vanilla tier 2/3/4 weapons are better in every way. It's not even a "oh I have an alternative." You'll just be at a disadvantage if you play on HoE.

Also PLEASE search up the G36C animations. That's what level of quality we're on with this game now.

Best gameplay in the series paired with some of the worst "writing" I've had to sit through in a while. When this originally came out back in 2019, I was absolutely floored with how awful it is. The best way to describe it is imagine the worst parts of Twitter and Reddit with the management we all know and love from Gearbox. Majority of the classic characters have been shoved aside or straight up killed off and replaced with new god awful npcs that make you want to blow your brains out. The only character worth keeping the dialogue option enabled for is Zane.

Gearbox, I am begging you. Retcon this entire story and start from scratch. The fans will love you again.

dies from reddit cringe

also LMAO getting us to make an account to play multiplayer, i'll pass

I'm glad they make you play a French soldier so I can run away faster.

I'm bricked up and you best believe I'm gunna Murkoff