PAYDAY 3 Review | The Not-So Perfect Score

Few concepts lend themselves so naturally well to a video game than the heist. Heists have clear goals, usually involving the stealing of some kind of valuable item or money. Heists can be pulled off by a single bad apple or a crew of professional criminals. There are multiple ways a heist can be approached, whether there’s a lot of shouting and firearms being waved around, or silently getting in and out without anyone suspecting a thing. Pair all of these elements with the fantasy of pulling off the perfect crime, and you have yourself a recipe for a fun video game. From developer Starbreeze Studios and publisher Deep Silver, PAYDAY 3 is the long-awaited heist fantasy followup to 2013’s PAYDAY 2. While the foundations of the game are airtight, as it currently stands PAYDAY 3 is more of a botched job than a perfect score. 

PAYDAY 3 is primarily a first-person shooter that blends a variety of different mechanics and gameplay styles to bring to life the “heisting fantasy”. The game’s narrative centers around the aptly named Payday Gang, a group of criminals whose brazen actions bestowed fantastic riches onto themselves over the course of the previous two games. Having made a considerable number of enemies in the past, the gang is targeted by a mysterious group of powerful individuals and is thrust out of early retirement when their assets are seized and their gang is splintered by attempts on their lives. Backed into a corner, the gang sets out to discover who is responsible for the attacks and regain their lost wealth. 

Despite having a cast of named characters and some extensive background lore, the story has never been a significantly prominent part of the PAYDAY games. The story is presented in brief cutscenes consisting of sequences of still images with voice-overs that occur between each heist in the game. The images have a hand-drawn painterly look to them and they certainly establish a moody vibe. Voice performances from the many characters are fairly good across the board, both in cutscenes as well as during gameplay. The tone strikes this line of just serious enough to feel grounded, but goofy enough to not feel overly dramatic. The voice cast, made up of returning and new members, sounds like they are having a lot of fun in their roles and that is carried across well when playing the game. The story itself isn’t really emotionally investing and won’t really shock or surprise, but what’s in the game currently serves well enough to link the game’s heists together in a logical way. It would have been nice to see fully 3D animated cutscenes, but what’s here is certainly an improvement over the primarily voice-over method of story delivery in PAYDAY 2. 

Gameplay is the real meat and potatoes of the PAYDAY games, and PAYDAY 3 is no exception. As was mentioned above, PAYDAY 3 is first and foremost a first-person shooter. Players will spend a lot of their time blasting away at seemingly unending waves of armored SWAT forces or sneaking around picking offbeat cops from the shadows. Players are also tasked with completing a number of objectives during the hectic firefights and tense sneaking in order to obtain loot and escape. The game is structured in such a way that you can play by yourself with AI teammates or you can play with up to 3 other players. That’s the surface-level summary of gameplay, but going a bit deeper reveals a lot of variability in how you choose to play.

Let’s start by breaking down the two main ways a heist can play out, loud and stealth. Seven of PAYDAY 3’s eight launch heists offer both approaches, while one of the heists can only be completed by going loud. Once you select a heist to play, you have some time to select a loadout you want to bring with you consisting of your weapons, skills, special equipment, etc. Once you load in, you are able to walk around doing some light reconnaissance, looking for points of entry, locations of guards and cameras, or assessing how many civilians may be present in a given area. This is important because each time you start a heist, these elements can be randomized in slight ways. 

Once you have a lay of the land, you can choose how to proceed, whether that’s sneaking into restricted areas or masking up and firing a few shots in the air. Depending on which approach you go with, the objectives you will need to complete will change. The best part of this system is how fluid it can be. One of your teammates might be spotted by the first camera they see forcing the heist to go loud right at the start, or you could be inside a bank’s vault filling your bags with cash only to have the manager walk by at an inopportune moment and sound the alarms. Depending on whether you are playing by yourself or with a crew, heists can play out in numerous different ways every time you play which remains entertaining even after replaying a heist five, ten, or twenty times over. You never know exactly how it is going to shake out. 

Let’s look at playing loud first because that is where many of the heists you play will inevitably end up spiraling into. After your crew has pulled out their masks and weapons and the alarms are blaring, you have some time to gather hostages for the “Negotiation” phase. Hostages have way more function in PAYDAY 3 than in the previous games. You are able to trade hostages in order to delay the police’s first assault and as the heist progresses, you can trade them in between assault waves in order to get resources like health kits. Police forces will also change their tactics if hostages are present. If you are holding a hostage, police will be more reserved in where they are firing their weapons. Enemies like the Nader that can throw deadly gas grenades will switch to concussion grenades if there are hostages present nearby. Certain hostages can also be used for completing heist objectives like using a bank manager to bypass a retinal scanner on a vault door. After a certain amount of time, the police are gonna knock the doors down, and that’s where the fight really begins. 

When choosing to go loud on a heist, many of the objectives are designed around holding out against waves of enemies while waiting for various pieces of equipment to progress forward. This might take the form of waiting for thermite to burn a hole into a vault or waiting for a helicopter to arrive to extract everyone and the loot. The difficulty of loud lies in trying to balance the limited resources you have like ammo, armor, and health, with the increasing threat of heavily armored SWAT and special enemy types. Similar to the Left 4 Dead games, there are special units that have unique abilities that you need to fend off in addition to standard SWAT, like the Zapper which can freeze you in place with electricity until a teammate can free you, or the lumbering Bulldozers that have an insane amount of armor and can charge at you like a bull. PAYDAY 3 introduces some new special enemy types like the previously mentioned Nader which tosses a variety of grenades to blind teammates or lockdown certain areas, as well as Hostage Rescue and Sabotage squads that move in to try and extract hostages or mess with any equipment you are trying to use. These special enemies have distinct voice lines and sounds that instantly clue you in if one is in the area, and the unique attacks they have can create some truly hectic situations and force some on-the-fly decision-making that is consistently engaging.

Once you have your loot in hand, it’s time to move it to the getaway. At this time, the police forces will launch a “Final Charge”, an endless assault until either you and your crew successfully escape or are killed. This is a new feature in PAYDAY 3 and is a nice shakeup to the end phase of the heist. This is the riskiest part of any heist where you can see the finish line in sight, but the police are at their most dangerous and give you everything they have. During the Final Charge, players can work with efficiency, tossing bags of loot to each other like a well-oiled machine, or it can devolve into a mad dash to escape under a hail of gunfire just to get out with anything at all. Once you and your team escape, you’re in the clear. 

But what if you chose a more silent approach? Well for most of the heists in PAYDAY 3 this is an option and provides an entirely different experience. In stealth, there are no hostage negotiations or heavily armored SWAT enforcers. The goal is to extract the loot with as little people knowing as possible. You will be avoiding security cameras, sneaking past roaming guards, disabling security measures, finding passwords, and pickpocketing security clearance in order to successfully pull off a heist in stealth. Once you get to the loot, getting out with it and not getting caught can be just as difficult as fleeing under gunfire. 

When it comes to stealth, PAYDAY 3 has made some significant changes over the previous games. Environments now have specific areas designated “Public”, “Private”, and “Secure” and these areas have different sets of rules that apply to the player when inside them. Public areas for instance are free for players to explore without fears of cameras or guards spotting them (while they have their masks off and guns holstered of course). Getting spotted in a Private area will lead to guards escorting you back to the public area. While this may seem like something you don’t want to have happen, this can actually be used to your advantage in a number of ways. Perhaps the guard escorting you is holding a keycard on his hip, having him escort you out brings him in close for a sly little pickpocket maneuver. Or perhaps you offer to take the fall and distract a patrolling guard while your teammates sneak past toward an objective that was previously blocked. Being caught in a secure area, however, usually results in you being handcuffed or the alarms going off.

Returning from PAYDAY 2 are guard pagers. Should you find yourself in a position where you need to take out a guard, you can do that, but you will need to stick around and answer their pager with a cover story. You are limited in the amount of pagers you can answer so you are unable to just clear out a heist of any and all threats. Playing heists on higher difficulties introduces other curve balls like cameras that can’t be shot down, having even fewer available pagers you can answer, or even a “Lead Guard” that has an endless pager call that someone will need to attend to. 

Where loud gameplay becomes a frantic fast-paced shootout, stealth is a tense and slow affair. The same heist offers completely different challenges and objectives depending on which playstyle you are attempting. This gets further complicated when you decide whether you are tackling it yourself or with others. In a loud heist, having friends to help carry the loot or bring different equipment is hugely beneficial. However, in stealth, more people equals more potential points of failure. Each play style has its advantages and disadvantages that all play into just how differently the same heist can play out every time you play it. 

The foundation of this system was set in PAYDAY 2, but the changes made in PAYDAY 3 allow the individual systems to flow together much better. Many times in PAYDAY 2 if you were attempting a stealth heist, the moment you were caught it was essentially time to restart from the beginning. In PAYDAY 3, the systems allow for fewer situations where a restart is really necessary. 

That said, some things were changed not necessarily for the better. In PAYDAY 2, elements like the locations of cameras, guards, and things like security codes could be randomized every time you retried a heist which always kept you on your toes and engaged while playing. In PAYDAY 3, these elements are only randomized when you “start” a heist. For example, if you start a heist and find out that the code to a door is 1337, the code to that door will remain 1337 regardless of how many times you restart, as long as you never fully exit the heist. I feel this was done to cut down on the number of times people restart a heist, but I feel the difficulty is somewhat neutered as it currently stands. Perhaps higher difficulties could obtain the ability to randomize these elements, while lower difficulties can keep the static randomization. It’s one area (albeit small) where PAYDAY 2 is a bit more engaging than this game. The other main detraction to the gameplay systems is up to the fact that the game always requires an internet connection to play, which I will be getting into more detail later. So while a number of changes have been made that improve the overall gameplay experience, there is still more work to be done to make it truly great. 

Gunplay in a shooting game is often make or break, and the gunplay in PAYDAY 3 is thankfully very good. The weapons are what you would come to expect, a number of machine guns, shotguns, SMGs, pistols and even a few sniper rifles. All of these weapons have unlockable attachments that can augment their performance, as well as a number of paint options and charms to customize the look. Another new addition comes in the form of “Overkill Weapons” which are essentially powerful weapons you can call in during a heist. There are only two currently at launch, a grenade launcher, and a sniper rifle that highlights enemies through walls. These weapons feel akin to getting a power weapon in Halo and are pretty fun to use, even though the grenade launcher may cause more harm to yourself than the enemies. The weapon sounds are punchy and impactful and many of the guns do feel different to one another. Enemies have loads of different animations reacting to getting hit by different weapons which makes the gunplay feel even more powerful. The gunplay doesn’t exceed other contemporaries in the FPS field, but what’s here is solid and fun. 

Another huge aspect of the PAYDAY gameplay loop is character builds. You receive skill points at regular rank-up intervals that you can place into various skills that are separated into different playstyles or roles like “Hacker” or “Infiltrator”. These skills can bestow a number of different abilities to players from being able to hack guard radios for a distraction, to resource boxes like ammo crates being able to offer additional chances to resupply. 

Many of the skills feed into a new system of buffs for PAYDAY 3. There are three main buffs that can be activated during a heist in a number of ways; these are Edge, Grit, and Rush. If you have Edge active, you deal 10% more damage, Grit has you taking 10% less damage, and Rush increases your movement speed. These are temporary buffs, but many of the skills can offer new ways to receive these buffs. Characters can even be built with the primary focus of having one of these buffs active at all times. Skills need to be researched before they can be unlocked which basically comes naturally as you play the game. PAYDAY 3 has many skills but the skill points are capped out at 21, so you really have to pick and choose which skills you want to specialize in for your specific playstyle. The Edge, Grit, Rush system is fine in execution but it feels a little less specialized. Certain skills are very powerful in PAYDAY 3 and it only takes a few skill points to have a very successful all-around build that takes on basically anything the game throws at you. The skills in PAYDAY 3 do allow for different playstyles and varied character builds, but currently, it feels like it is just scratching the surface of what might be possible with the system down the line. 

Let’s talk about the heists themselves, that’s a pretty important part of a heist game after all. PAYDAY 3 offers 8 heists at launch with more promised to be coming down the line. The heists at launch are a sort of “greatest hits” of locations seen in previous PAYDAY games. You have your banks, armored transport, nightclub, jewelry store, art gallery, etc. The kind of stuff you would expect to see in a heist game. The levels are usually multi-layered buildings that have numerous entry points and locked-off areas. After playing these heists a couple of times you start to learn the layout and become more familiar with different routes you can take to get to different objectives. The objectives have been designed in such a way that many of them can be applied to any heist, such as hacking computers and flipping colored switches. While the locations themselves often feel quite distinct from one another, the objectives can start to feel too overly similar after a few hours. There is an objective where you need to stand in various circles at the level to get a better Wi-Fi signal for a hack. This objective in theory is interesting because it can be applied to both stealth and loud, in loud the challenge becomes staying in a specific spot while trying to minimize the damage you take, while in stealth the challenge lies in staying in one spot without getting spotted. In practice, it ends up being a bit tedious and feels like a bit of a time waster with not much context given to the actions you are doing. Overall the few heists that are available at launch are fun for the most part and do offer the feeling of pulling the perfect job, however, I would like to see the settings and objectives become a bit more varied and unique going forward. 

Visually PAYDAY 3 is a bit of a mixed bag. Running on Unreal Engine 4, the game is a dramatic improvement over PAYDAY 2 which used the dated Diesel Engine. However, compared to other games released in 2023, it may come off as looking dated still. The environment detail looks quite nice using a range of different colors and times of day to make each heist feel visually distinct. Effects like particles and explosions look quite nice in motion, but character models have a simplistic look that lacks facial animations for guards speaking to you. On the whole, I wouldn’t say PAYDAY 3 looks bad, like the gameplay and the story, it’s perfectly serviceable, it just doesn’t impress in any significant way. 

Music on the other hand is pretty great. On the heists that offer both stealth and loud playstyles, there are two different tracks that will play. Many of the loud tracks incorporate synths, drums, and guitars and have a high-energy feel that will have you tapping your feet. The stealth tracks are a bit more interesting. Much like the flow of the gameplay, they often start quiet and reserved, but as you complete more objectives during the heist, the music transitions and introduces more layers and instruments. It’s implemented in a fun way that rewards you for keeping a heist together in stealth while also making sure the music never gets stale. Some tracks are better than others but in general, the music establishes the vibes well and is a great accompaniment to the gameplay. 

To this point, I’ve had mostly positive things to say about PAYDAY 3, but like a job turning sour, the game has numerous issues that need to be addressed. PAYDAY 3 is a live service game and with that comes certain expectations from players, and unfortunately at launch the game is living up to most of the bad qualities live service games tend to exhibit.

PAYDAY 3 is a video game that requires an internet connection and server stability to be playable. Due to the high amount of interest in the game from players at launch, the game’s servers were overloaded and the game was unplayable for the better part of two full days, and was extremely spotty for days following with frequent server disconnection errors. For a game asking any amount of money from people, this is unacceptable. This shouldn’t be acceptable even for a free game. There is currently no option for an offline mode. If you are playing by yourself with AI team members, you still need to matchmake online for some reason. Even one month out from launch at the time of writing this review, there are still issues with player lobbies not filling fully online or lobbies that are set to private that players are able to randomly join. And frustrating still, these always online issues seep their way into the gameplay as well, with certain mechanics like interacting with objects and guard detection meters being visually delayed which can have a significant impact on the game. If there is one issue that severely needs to be addressed it is the always online nature of the game. As long as it is still implemented in the game, there will always be the worry that the game just won’t be playable due to factors outside anyone’s control, and that is a massive problem. 

Unfortunately, PAYDAY 3 seems to omit a number of features that one would expect to see in a multiplayer service game. One of the biggest omissions comes in the lack of in-game voice chat. The game does have a text chat like PAYDAY 2 had, but most multiplayer games, especially games where teamplay is important, have in-game voice chat. There is no “vote to kick” option, which can lead to long wait times if random players refuse to ready up before a heist. Even features that were in PAYDAY 2 like a dedicated server browser or even the fun pre-planning system where you could look at and draw on a blueprint of the building you were about to work over have been stripped down or removed. These missing features give the impression that the game was perhaps launched too early. Hopefully, these can be added into the game over future updates.

The other main issue with the game is one that is a bit of a hot topic within the PAYDAY community, and that is how progression is handled. Upon successfully completing a heist you will get a cash payout depending on the amount of loot you are able to steal. You also receive weapon XP for the weapons you use during the heist, which enables you to unlock those weapon attachments. The issue lies with XP for your character progression. Your overall level dictates when you get skill points as well as when certain weapons and cosmetics become available to purchase. As it stands currently, the only way to gain character XP is by completing challenges. Early on this isn’t much of a problem because you are completing challenges left and right for playing different heists, using equipment and new weapons, and doing various actions in game. Eventually, once you complete more challenges, this does become a problem because there will be instances where you spend 20 minutes doing a bank heist, successfully beat it, and receive no character XP because you didn’t complete any challenges. On paper, the challenge system seems smart because it incentivizes experimenting with different playstyles and equipment. But it kind of falls apart when you find a setup you like using because you stop progressing unless you use a bunch of equipment or play styles that you don’t like because they have uncompleted challenges tied to them. And some of these challenges don’t reflect the idea of “experimentation”. Some of these challenges require you to drop specific equipment boxes over 100 times or getting several hundred kills with specific weapons. Sure you will eventually accomplish these challenges, but if you don’t like having to use a specific weapon when there are better options available, then what is the point? 

There is also another form of in-game currency called “C-Stacks”. Certain premium items can only be purchased with C-Stacks, things like cosmetics, or specifically configured weapons that have unique skins. C-Stacks are not a currency that can be bought with real money (though it may seem that way at a glance), you convert your in-game cash to C-Stacks. Confusingly, there is a scaling system where every time you buy a bundle of C-Stacks the cost to buy another is increased, until it resets at the start of a new week. This is meant to give more weight and purpose to the in-game cash which to be fair lost value in PAYDAY 2, which is a worthwhile problem to try and solve. But the system implemented here is confusing to navigate and feels overly grindy for many of the items. Simple cosmetics like a different pair of gloves or a mask can cost an amount of C-Stacks that would require multiple cash conversions. Why not give the option to buy with either C-Stacks or straight cash? It just seems like an unnecessary extra step and complication. This system will get even more confusing in the future if microtransactions or other “premium currencies”  are introduced into the equation. 

On the topic, let’s talk about money and DLC for a minute. PAYDAY 2 over the last 10 years received countless DLCs in the form of new heists, character packs, weapon packs, and eventually character customization items like new suits and gloves. PAYDAY 3 is a game that has launched at a discounted price of $39.99 USD as well as launching on Xbox Game Pass on day one. The developers have outlined a roadmap for the game’s first year that includes additional DLC heists, and as long as the pricing is fair, I don’t see an issue with this model of post-launch support. However, in recent years we have seen multiple examples of “live-service” games that start to abuse the model and it seems like everywhere you try and look these games are trying to sell you something. Seeing as there is no such functionality in PAYDAY 3 at the time of this review, it doesn’t make any sense to knock the game in this regard. However, during the development of PAYDAY 2, there was a time when loot boxes were added into the game and quickly removed due to immense backlash from players. It remains to be seen how PAYDAY 3 will incorporate additional post-launch monetization, but there are a couple of flags here that cause some concern. 

 The last thing to touch on is the technical performance. At the beginning of my time with PAYDAY 3, I was experiencing a good amount of stuttering during gameplay. After taking some time to mess with my settings I was able to get the game to run much smoother with a consistent framerate, but now I have some fairly noticeable flicker as lighting and shadows update in a given level. It’s not a deal breaker but something that likely isn’t intended. Bug-wise I personally haven’t encountered much outside of bodies getting caught inside of walls and generally funny little quirks. However, when playing online I have been in sessions where some exploits to enemy AI have popped up like guard radios not functioning like they are supposed to and indicators becoming stuck on screen. The game has been slow to get any sort of updates due to the developers having committed to PC and console players getting updates at the same time. Due to the time taken to develop any of the fixes combined with the certification period required for console version updates, many of these exploits and bugs are still present in the game. As of the time of writing, PAYDAY 3 has received its first update which had a large list of bug fixes which is a step in the right direction, but more work is needed and it will likely take some time to get many of the issues sorted out..

As a fan who logged over 200 hours in PAYDAY 2, I was looking forward to the release of PAYDAY 3. After spending nearly 40 hours with PAYDAY 3, the foundation of a fun game is here. The gameplay and presentation are solid and there’s plenty of room for expansion and deepening of many of the systems in the game. However the game’s required online connection, missing and lacking features, and generally light amounts of content hold this back in a big way. If you are interested in giving the game a try, I suggest playing via Xbox Game Pass which is how I played the game. If this is not an option, I suggest waiting until a later date for more updates and patches to be released or waiting for a sale. PAYDAY 3 is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and Windows. The game is also available on Xbox Game Pass.