Payday 3 review: a thrilling heist simulator with an identity crisis

Payday 3 is bare-bones at launch, but I still can’t stop playing it. As I perfect my heisting strategies and flesh out my character build, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m playing a promising early-access build of a game that will be excellent in a few years’ time.

It looks much better than the previous version. What’s more, the tension-and-release pacing of its heists creates a powerful atmosphere, pumping me full of adrenaline and emotion on a regular basis. The thrill of running into the street in the middle a police raid to lower the barriers for a getaway car is thrilling, and so is weaving around sniper’s lasers while stowing stolen money on an hovering helicopter. Across the board, there’s a thrilling aura to Payday 3’s heists that only grows as you get deeper into the difficulty levels and brush up against the inherent chaos of the AI. Things can go wrong in an instant, and they often do — but the focus here is on adapting to the mayhem rather than being resigned to it.

Payday 3’s biggest change to the cooperative heisting formula is in how it prods you to break away from your muscle memory and indulge in everything it has to offer. While I was teaching a co-op partner how to stealth their way through the game’s opening bank heist, they mistakenly threw a grenade, scuppering our endeavors. It’s not just about the money. Payday 2, or the Second Day of PaymentThis would cause an immediate restart but not Payday 3No matter how you feel about the sudden pivot, it’s still fun to make it through. Payday Heist Experience: Begin in stealth but end loud. Is it possible to have the best of two worlds? It’s complicated.

Starbreeze Studios/Overkill Software/Deep Silver image via Polygon

With the always-online requirement, players are forced to live with fear that they could lose a quarter of an hour’s progress if there is any server or Internet trouble. Payday 3Gives solo or stealth players less of an incentive to continue playing.

This is partly because weapons and skill trees have their own progression systems, but your overarching level is gated by the completion of particular challenges rather than heist difficulty, with a focus on using every weapon and piece of equipment in the game’s arsenal.

While there are some challenges that require stealth, by the time you get to the middle of the game, you’ll be able to complete a heist on the hardest difficulty without receiving any extra cosmetic rewards or XP. If you stealth-complete the challenge, it’s as if you completed it 3 times louder, with different weapons, each time.

You can make a game more appealing to the general public by switching specializations for adaptability. However, this will alienate hardcore gamers. The social component of the game remains intact, even after this switch. Payday 3It is missing. With no server browser, matchmaking is a lottery, and it’s difficult to communicate in multiplayer lobbies, making it tough for solo players to make friends and fall into a crew to replace the inadequate AI bots.

Starbreeze Studios/Overkill Software/Deep Silver image via Polygon

Payday 3 remixes the objectives and layouts of familiar locations — nightclubs, art galleries, and penthouses — but the all-new heists leave the best impression. “99 Boxes” tasks you with finding degrading components in a shipyard, and “Road Rage” has you escorting an armored truck across a busy bridge.

On higher difficulties both missions become incredibly tense, with the best gunplay during Payday 3’s epic final assaults as you crack the thin glass door on advancing riot shields to nail headshots and escape clumps of cops. Hearing the news that an elite enemy like the armored Dozer has arrived on the scene is genuinely harrowing when you’re running out of ammo, too. But once you’ve played each heist a few times, the lay of the land becomes intimate, which kneecaps replayability outside of the allure of Payday 3’s moreish gunfights. Due to the instanced servers, you don’t get a new layout every time you restart, either, so unraveling an environment becomes more about trial and error than reactive tactics.

Payday 3’s straight-laced story is played out via animatics that you unlock by completing the game’s eight heists in sequence. It covers the un-retirement of the Payday crew to take down a nefarious corporate entity, and there’s really not much else to say about it. The charming voice acting and barks give each playable character a lot of personality. Brit thief Hoxton’s guard radio replies became a consistent highlight as he weaved tall tales about feeding a mountain lion a kebab or eating a beans-on-toast buffet.

Starbreeze Studios Overkill Software/Deep Silver Image via Polygon

A narrative that is lacking in substance can be far more offensive than one with no story. Payday 3 It removes multiple gaming systems and does not provide a replacement. You have unlimited cable ties to turn civilians into hostages this time around, and there’s no concealment rating, multiple-day heists, or utility weapons like Payday 2’s portable saw. Drills and drill-related skills are much less of a factor, too — it’s all an effort to allow you to approach heists in any way you want, but it has created a worrisome vacuum.

In place of all this upheaval, we have extra-forgiving stealth phases, a long list of skill trees, and three new buffs — Edge, Grit, and Rush — that boost damage, defense, and movement speed, respectively. Payday 3’s buffs are tied to certain skills and can be triggered in-game to create a chain of benefits. It takes a lot of intuition to figure out the order in which to use them. This leads to some amusing interactions as you gain more skills to play around with. As an example, by maintaining Rush, you can barge into locked doors or instajiggle locks.

Starbreeze Studios, Overkill Software/Deep Silver via Polygon

However, at level 38 with a measly 11 skill points, I already feel like I’ve gotten all the abilities I want, and I’m struggling to understand the benefits of getting into the weeds of the new build system. I’m not jonesing for anything the vendors are peddling, and it wouldn’t matter if I was, as I haven’t struggled for money to try out every gun as they became available. Broadly, the systemic additions aren’t making up for what has been left behind, and Payday 3’s economy isn’t strong enough to keep me grinding for months on end.

Yet even with all these issues, I can’t help but feel invested in Payday 3’s future. In the last 10 years many games tried to copy each other, but failed. Payday 2’s success, which is why Starbreeze can deliver such a limited foundation that still feels compelling. It’s like watching a new movie by your favorite esoteric director that isn’t quite up to scratch. You’re grateful to just have more, even if it’s not the huge step forward you were looking for.

The time you take to consider and reflect on this will help. Payday 3 can usurp its predecessor, but for now, that predecessor looms large over the new game’s launch. The moment-to minute gameplay may have been enhanced, but the heart of Payday lies in its systems, and this is what makes the threequel so lacking.

Payday 3The game was released Sept. 21, on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. Deep Silver provided a code for a prerelease Xbox download. Vox Media is affiliated with other companies. Vox Media earns commissions from affiliate products, although this doesn’t influence the editorial content. This is where you can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.