Right. This will be a very long review.

---GAME MECHANICS---

First thing's first is the base game which is admittingly fun with friends despite being very flawed. Let me explain.

This is one game that prides itself on DLC. I say this because you will spend more than double the amount of money you spent on the base game on DLC. You will not survive with just the base game and the user will very likely get destroyed with no mercy because of the sheer artificial difficulty of the game. Balance does not exist in this game. You WILL have to get DLC if you want to do good or have any items that help you stand a chance.

Your entire team can get messed up by the special police units like tasers, bulldozers, and cloakers. Even if you've played 1,000+ hours of this game you and your team are at the mercy of the AI of the police if you go loud. A cloaker can take down an entire team in seconds. Tasers keep you from doing ANYTHING including defending yourself and you may get screwed over if a cloaker just so happens to target you while tased. Bulldozers, despite having a small hitbox that you can deal damage to, are actually the easiest. Why? Because they don't disable you from doing anything despite them having shotguns that can take you down in two hits so you can at the very least get out of the way.

This, combined with many other flaws like glitches (enemies going through walls or the guards spotting you in stealth through walls or on the other side of the map is kind of unfair...this doesn't even count the horrible desync online that can allow you and your teammates to duplicate items), the very bad lack of balance in weapons (you will likely look to using the same 5 every time despite the amount of weapons added), the pointless armor that doesn't help whatsoever and just slows you down, the "drill waiting" snorefest you will encounter in nearly every heist, the repetitive bag throwing done in every heist, the increasingly boring aspect of the game you get as you play more and end up playing all the heists, the rehashing of maps and passing them along as new heists (Day 1 of Rats has been reused 3 times now including in a recent Halloween 2015 event)...it's very flawed. And don't get me started on the grind-heavy aspect of this game. It punishes you for everything. All except owning DLC. The more DLC you have, the better you'll do in the game as all the best items are locked in DLC.

Did I say you HAVE to get the DLC? It isn't a choice, to be honest. 80% of content, including achievements, are locked behind the paywall of DLC.

You will rage for all the wrong reasons.

So why did I keep playing? Because it was fun with friends. You'll have good times with them. Playing with yourself or with strangers is just too risky. The game cannot be completed in solo because of the bad AI and overwhelmingly unbalanced nature of the game and playing with strangers? I do not recommend it. It is a hostile enviornment you will enter and it is just not worth it.

That brings me, however, to another aspect of this game that I'd like to touch upon.

---THE COMMUNITY---

The community is very VERY hostile and divided and only on occasion will they band together (such as getting 30,000 people on the game at the same time during the Road to Crimefest 2015). Otherwise it's like two brick walls facing each other hurling insults at one another. They don't listen to each other, There's no mutual ground in between. You're either for Overkill (and called a shill) or against them (and called a whiny ungrateful brat, to put it midly without swearing). You may not feel welcome and it's why I've been a lurker in the community for so long. I'm not sinking my toes in a pool of shark-infested waters.

This, like the game, didn't start out this way. But as Overkill's actions continued to build up the community just split in two. It's depressing.

---EARLY DAYS---

I remember when the game first came out. It looked so cool, so fun. I didn't have much money at the time so I couldn't buy it for a few months. It wasn't until late 2013, I think autumn, that I bought the game. Before I had the chance to play it my personal life got in the way, things happened, and I had to hold off on it for now.

Even early in PAYDAY 2's life there was DLC coming out. DLC for the game in 2013/early 2014 was few and far between. It had lots of content. Armored Transport has many heists in it along with guns, patterns, and more. I bought it and by mid-2014 I had begun to play the game a lot more. Back then to grind for levels you did Rats constantly and V-100 was the max. "Prestige"/Infamy didn't seem that big of a deal to me in this game as it felt like it was legitimately rewarding (Infamy 2.0 update changed that. Even bigger and pointless grind and no real rewards after Infamy 5 other then meh masks.).

---THE TURNING POINT---

I remember when stealth got tweaked. You had to answer pagers and there was only a maximum of 4 before it was ruined. This, to me, was the beginning of the pattern of "annoying but no big deal in the long run so whatever" moves that Overkill began to implement in the game.

They also had started with the monthly DLC and now it had gone from heavy-content DLC that seemed to have effort put into it to 5-weapon DLC. Again, annoying but no big deal. The game was still sort of fun for me and Overkill seemed to be trustworthy. Then it became monthly. Why? No other company, regardless of how poor they are, does this! But that, as annoying as it was, wasn't the last straw. There have still been high points like Crimefest 2014 where the original character of Hoxton returned and that keep the wheels turning.

I also started to notice that free things became more and more poorly implemented. The free/pay ratio was becoming very telling and it seemed more and more like Overkill was letting the game's popularity go to their head. Promises were broken (safehouse customizations were promised 2 years ago and as of this review still nothing, the Completely Overkill Pack item has still not released despite multiple reassurements that it would come out/release on this time window, and of course the determination to not use microtransactions), and the game became even more of a glitchy mess as DLC after DLC was chugged out while obvious glitches like the desync were ignored.

It seemed like Overkill completely forgot what PAYDAY 2 was. They started putting out character after character no matter how unfitting they were to the game. There's two characters who are nothing more than collaborations (seriously this game is collaboration central). There's a character who has the most grating voice ever (I'm sorry Clover but your voice...wow) and another who is only there just because (Bonnie). What was once a game of professional criminal mischief has turned into an amateur frat party.

My relationship with Overkill went from "love" to "love-hate". Things went downhill from there.

---THE FINAL STRAW---

Before Crimefest 2015, the Hype Train event from earlier in the year was bad. It was more paying funds for "fuel". If not for the heist that came with it (Hoxton Revenge) the event wouldn't have been great. And then of course Crimefest 2015 happened with microtransactions and, after the Reddit AMA that followed that was to me a giant "screw you" to everyone I was done.

Do I recommend this game? No. Even without the microtransactions this game is very poorly made and unforgiving to new players. I was lucky to get into the game and ease into it. I probably wouldn't have been able to do that today and would've stopped playing. I'm very demotivated to playing now. I just don't trust this company anymore. Maybe I'll touch upon the game at some point in the near future but right now I just don't see that happening.

It's sad to see a franchise that rose so well, fall so hard. Good luck to those that stick around though. In my opinion you'll need it.