GOTY. And yes I know E33 exists

I haven't loved a game I sucked this hard at since Rocket League.

While an autobattler, it scratches the RTS/starcraft itch I've missed for a long time. The devs have a great foundation and I am really looking forward to seeing where this game goes from here.

They have already made a few balance passes so we know they're willing to keep an eye on that.
If you spend 10 minutes in the games public chat, you're bound to see various people complain about how every unit in the game is OP.. which in my opinion is the mark of a well balanced game generally speaking. Every unit can be a game changer if used well.

My biggest criticism would be just that the out of match UI is a mess and could use some real love all around.
In match - It'd be nice to see a pre-round 'undo' button if you accidentally bought the wrong unit or tech.

When you come to this steam store page, the very first video that auto plays is a game played between Humans Vs Goblins. Funny enough, Goblins are one of the several teams not included in the game at launch. I wish that was the biggest problem with this game.

For review context, I have over 600 hours in BB2, over 100 hours in BB1, and some experience with Fumbbl

So far the game is missing way too many core features of a fantasy football game, features that were present in the previous two games of the series for me to recount. Some of the Highlights are:

- No reconnect option. In a game currently riddled with bugs, softlocks, memory leaks, crashes, and server instability issues.. The fact that they thought it would be ok to not have a reconnect feature at launch is absurd to me. A lot of the problems with this game wouldn't feel so bad if people could just alt+f4 and then reconnect, instead of knowing all of their progress is lost and their opponent is that much more fed due to issues completely out of their control. According to Cyanide's own roadmap and timetable, this feature is not slated to be included until season 2, which is August of 2023. I truly hope they realize the dire need for this feature and reconsider their timeline.

- League Management Tools: Cyanide made sure to mention that league management tools would be available at release. These 'tools' are so barebones and borderline nonexistent that multiple major community leagues have already decided to postpone their bb3 leagues until more robust options are available. I don't even see an option in my private league to grant others admin access. Feel free to check out REBBL's website for their take on this which would probably mean more than coming from my perspective.

- Each player model has only 1 appearance. In the previous game there were typically 3 variants to choose from. Some models are too similar to even tell apart. Dwarven Blockers and Dwarven runners at a glance are nearly indistinguishable for me.

- NO STATS!? This one might be what baffles me the most. Nowhere can you even view the match history of your team. Nowhere can you view the match history of games that have taken place in your league or competition. I don't even see a simple Win/Loss record for my teams listed anywhere. You can't see a players stats, such as how many tds they've scored, injuries they've causes, etc. I can't see my stats from a coach perspective, how many games I've won/lost in total. Now to be fair, there are some pages that simply don't load currently due to their nonstop server issues, such as the 'teams list' page when viewing a competition. Maybe some of this info is on that screen? Couldn't tell you, but I doubt it honestly. At the end of a game, if you're lucky enough to see the end of match screen due to server issues, you're greeted with a super basic screen that just shows you which player earned SPP, and how much money you earned from the match. The dice statistics from BB2 are gone.

- No visual mutations: The devs are now on record of saying it was an intentional design choice to not visually show mutations on player models and this feature will not be added in the future. So not only do you only have 1 variant of players to choose from, but they will always look the same because they'll never be cool enough to have two heads, or an extra arm, or tentacles. My take on this? My best guess is it would've made their incredibly predatory 1 time use microtransation shop (of which I'm sure you will read plenty about in other people's reviews) that much more difficult to support.

- No CabalTV aka replay mode/spectator mode: This is another core feature that is on their roadmap to be included all the way out in November of 2023. In the meantime the only way to share games with your friends or allow content creators/casters to commentate matches is going to be through screensharing options such as discord.

- No in game chat: Thats right, you can't even communicate with your opponent anymore. Granted, I won't miss this feature at all in toxic public ladder games. But it'd still be a nice feature to have for community league play and maybe include an option to turn off in game chat for those who play public games and don't want to deal with toxicity?


The list goes on but I think these are my highlights. Outside of the missing core features, the UI in general is just a step backwards in design. Everything is harder to find and use. It seems like they made these UI changes in an attempt to be more controller friendly, but from the feedback I've seen in the BB3 discord from console players they hate the changes as well and preferred BB2 UI. Apparently there is also currently an issue with the thumbstick sensitivty being way too low and taking a long time to move the camera around the pitch.


Overall sentiments? I will probably keep playing this game with friends, because I am a glutton for punishment. Its why I play Blood Bowl, afterall. But in reality the ONLY thing this game has going for it, is the updated ruleset from BloodBowl2020 and some new teams to try out (while losing the ability to play several of the previous teams). Other than that Blood Bowl 2 is superior in every single way. I could never recommend this game to friends in its current state. I can't believe how barebones this game still is after years of multiple delays and multiple public tests. Maybe in August '23 when reconnects/replays/spectator modes are supposedly a thing the game will be worth picking up. Until then, sadly you'd be best to steer clear.

Fantastic game that keeps you coming back for more. Gameplay, art style, music, story all A+

Fun deckbuilder/roguelite with tons of replayability.