Not long after the completion of their biggest heist and quiet transition into retirement, Payday 3 sees the infamous Payday Gang forced back into the crime scene. It appears like someone that the gang has wronged in the past is seeking revenge, as the game's opening moment reveals that an explosion nearly took out five of them. Despite failing, the gang's accounts have been frozen and seized, leaving them broke and revealing a greater conspiracy. To fight back, the gang carries out a number of heists and operations to both uncover who all is behind this and bring them down.

It's an engaging premise and solid backdrop for the gameplay that follows. Throughout the last two games, a large and complex narrative has been woven together, and having a storyline where many of the people the gang has affected band together to take them down is the natural next step for this world. Additionally, making the missions half-heist, half-investigation just makes them more engaging and encourages a wider variety of play styles to get the jobs done. Whether it's the narrative, gameplay, or customization, developers Starbreeze Studios and Overkill Software has provided a lot of content that Payday fans will likely be very pleased with; however, the same cannot be said about players that are new to the series, due to some poor onboarding and confusing delivery.

Related: Every Payday 3 Character Who's Playable At Launch

Flawed Delivery Of A Good Story

One of the most interesting aspects of the Payday series is its story, which is surprisingly complex. The first entry was focused on the gameplay and provided a simple story to get players invested in the original four members of the Payday Gang and why they are committing heists. Payday 2, however, dedicated a lot of time and resources to crafting and delivering a large-scale story; the ambitious nature of it being comparable to studios like Remedy Entertainment. Alongside the base game and its plethora of DLC, the sequel had an accompanying live-action web series that included stars like Giancarlo Esposito, Lance Reddick, and Ron Pearlman.

Despite the core game delivering its story through static mission briefings, the web series made up for it with how well-written, -produced, -acted, and -shot it was. While that's great for Payday 2, it leaves this third installment feeling stale by comparison. The story of Payday 3 is told using dynamic comic-like paintings, a design choice that was negatively received in games like Arkane Studios' poorly reviewed vampire-shooter, Redfall. Despite these cutscenes being beautifully made, they struggle to feel substantive or engaging, and the heavily shadowed character art makes it difficult to match voices to their bodies. When paired with poor dialogue and subpar voice acting compared to previous entries, Payday 3 struggles to keep players invested in the story unless they are already well versed and invested.

Evolving And Improving Gameplay

Where Payday 3 truly shines is in its gameplay, which is no surprise for this series. Like its predecessors, each mission can be approached with stealth or with guns blazing, and players can customize their loadout before each mission to prepare for those approaches. Payday 3 has multiple changes to its loadout system, including minor tweaks to familiar categories, major changes to the skill system, and new categories all together.

Starting with the familiar, players can still choose and customize primary and secondary weapons, with each category having a ton of options to unlock. The minor tweaks lie in the armor, deployable, and throwable tabs, each of which now has only four options to choose from. To make up for the limitations of these categories, the developers introduced tools and overkill weapons. The four tools include the microcam, infrasonic mine, EMC jammers, and motion sensors, each of which can drastically affect a players approach to a mission. The overkill weapons are powerful, limited ammo weapons like grenade launchers and snipers that can be deployed after a certain amount of time. With improved enemy waves and types, like heavily armored police that take a lot of firepower to put down, calling in these weapons are crucial to success when a mission gets loud.

The skill system is the other major change to gameplay. Payday 3 has abandoned the skill tree model and perk decks, and replaced it with skill lines that are a sort of hybrid of the two. There is a base skill for each category that has a number of upgrades to unlock for each row, totaling 100 skills overall (120 when counting aced and mastery skills). When assigning skills, players are given 14 points that can be allocated to multiple base skills and upgrades at once, thus offering players more freedom and versatility in their builds. Each row and upgrade also includes one of three buffs: Edge, dealing 10% more damage; Grit, taking 10% less damage; and Rush, which increases movement speed. In practice, this is a well-balanced system that can change the tide of a mission, which is crucial depending on how the game is being played.

Poor Onboarding And Limitations

The biggest struggles facing Payday 3's gameplay are how players are introduced to it, alongside the inherent team-based nature of the game. Players can begin their time with Payday 3 in a tutorial, which runs players through movement and gunplay. What this tutorial does well is show off how impactful and satisfying the gunplay is, as well as how many ways combat can be approached, but it strangely omits an explanation on how infiltration works.

At no point are players taught how to use tools, go about investigating, or handle hostages, despite it being a huge part of the game - some of these are entirely new mechanics! Players are forced to learn on the fly which leads to frustrating mistakes and encounters that are so messy that new players likely won't learn how half the game is meant to be properly played. This issue is at its worst when playing single-player, since bots can't teach anything and random matchmaking doesn't guarantee players with headsets or experience to direct the gameplay. Yes, it's difficult to create a good single-player experience for a game that is clearly meant for teams that can communicate with one another, but a huge part of the single-player issue can be solved by including the stealth and non-combat gameplay in the tutorial.

Final Thoughts And Review Score

Overall, Payday 3 is another fantastic entry in a series of well received games. It may fall short in its storytelling and player onboarding, but it excels in providing an interesting plot, satisfying gameplay, well-designed levels, smart enemy A.I., and refined gameplay systems. While it's easy to recommend this for players that have access to a team to play with, the same cannot be said about those that don't; an issue that can hopefully be addressed with the changes and updates outlined in Payday 3's roadmap. Payday 3 is smart, fun, and chaotic in every way and is sure to rope in even more members into the Payday Gang.

Source: PlayStation/YouTube

Payday 3 is available September 21 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Screen Rant was provided with a Steam digital download for the purpose of this review.