Recent reviews by HazelNUT

piles of money as well as an irreplaceable fraction of the dev team's finite lifespans were dedicated to creating a system that requires matchmaking for private and solo lobbies, have fun with the consequences of that every time the servers ♥♥♥♥ the bed. assuming you get into a game, you're still getting screwed by this design decision by insane amounts of latency introduced even when you're solo or playing with people close enough to communicate with tin cans and string.

progression system is also needlessly obtuse and seems to have problems registering tasks as complete, even with over an hour staring at it while matchmaking (for private lobbies lmao) i still understood the system only enough to know that i hated it, with how much the challenges and leveling don't respect your time and conflict with coop by incentivizing inane task hunting and kill hoarding, it almost seems like a system designed for a mobile and/or freemium game.

Despite not being able to play much what gameplay i was able to see was overall decent enough, pretty much just a slightly nicer looking payday 2 with some sprinkling of new features and a smaller pool of fresh heists to imagine playing while matchmaking (dont remember having to do that with either of the first two games) if the above two paragraphs weren't considerations i would be confident recommending this to fans of the series as it seems like a good foundation for a game that could eventually surpass the other two while still being a decent enough time get something out of now, but I cant place much faith in the game getting better with so many questionable decisions resulting in foreseeable negative consequences for the consumer, whether out of greed or incompetence.

Of course to play at all you also have to make peace with one more useless account attached to your email (or a burner you'll have to remember.) almost goes without saying nowadays but still annoying enough to point out.

To summarize, I cant even recommend this to fans of the series. this game has taken a gameplay loop that I've sunk hundreds of hours into and happily spent 100+ usd to prolong with dlcs and its locked it behind so much tedium and frustration that i couldnt be bothered to put more than 2 hours into it. check back in at least a year before boarding this leaky ship, at least then you'll be able to better judge the monetization scheme it's chained to.