I can't, in good faith, recommend this game in its current state.

Recently, stability has been a huge issue. The game will crash to the desktop even by just sitting in the main menu. Setting up lobbies, using the army builder, or even adjusting settings will cause crashes to the desktop seemingly at random.

To make matters worse, multiplayer is simply unplayable. If you can even manage to get into a lobby, there's a 90% chance that there will be a cheater, and the developers seem to be putting in very little effort to do anything about it.

This wasn't the game that was promised to us when it was announced two years ago.

I'm an actual gunsmith. This sim is surprisingly VERY accurate.

10/10

shoes

It's worth the initial $35 investment

This is a great Mil-Sim game with a ton of potential. The gunplay is on-point and VERY true to form with the real deal. Early access has been a bit rough, with some minor connection issues and desync popping up every so often, but it's a solid concept, and I can't wait to see what the devs do with it in the future.

Starbreeze really dropped the ball with this one. After releasing two very successful, and very entertaining Payday games, the third is a massive disappointment in comparison.

At launch, there's only 8 heist which took our group only a few hours to get through before we got bored. The guns were lackluster, and to make matters worse, on Day 3 after release, we couldn't even get into a lobby, even while solo, due to server issues.

It's clear that this is an unfinished game that was not ready for release, and I hope I have the opportunity to re-write this review into a positive one after Starbreeze has a chance to fix their game, but as of right now, I'd give this one a hard pass.

After an extremely rough release (where the game simply did not work for a vast majority of those who purchased it) the developer got their act together and released two patches on Day 1 that improved optimization and stability issues for most of the issues that were recorded. While I feel that a closed beta test with a variety of different systems would have caught most of these issues, that is all in hindsight now as the dev team seems to have fixed most of what people were complaining about.

Now, about the game; It's basically the previous CMS titles, with far better graphics and much more to do. It still feels like a CMS title without getting rid of its finer points, but it has been improved in a way where the game is much more realistic than its previous editions.

It's $20 (not including the 10% discount on the first week) and owners of the previous CMS titles get an additional 10% off. I got it for around $16 all together. Honestly, not a half bad game, so long as the developers keep making improvements.