Blood Bowl 3 Review (Deekyfun)
As much as I enjoy Blood Bowl and wanted to see a new version with the updated 2020 ruleset, this release so far has been almost entirely disappointing. I'm a long-time player of the tabletop versions, and have all the previous digital releases. This edition has been a huge let down so far.
They've done a decent job trying to replicate the table top experience, in terms of the in-game mechanics and the art style, which does mimic the look of the models and game manual and box art. But the game is barely playable - there are many bugs being reported, all across the game, some of which are hard to understand how they got into a final release. Skills missing or not working, balls vanishing. I've seen a wide sample of these myself in under 3 hours, so I can only assume they were play-testing this with blindfolds on.
And when it does work, it feels very bare-bones, with barely any single-player focus and not really much to offer people into multiplayer presently either. The AI seems even worse than the previous games, which is saying something - it is obsessed with cages, often takes minutes to make a move, and sometimes opts not to move at all. I've seen it dance back and forth across the same tackle zones like a maniac. I've only played a handful of games against it so far, and it hasn't been even in danger of scoring a TD once. I know AI is hard, but it's been better in their previous games, so I can only assume the newer rules are causing some issue, and it's clear they haven't spent much time on it.
That's kind of the main take-home really; it feels like they haven't spent much time on it, but yet are expecting the customer to payout up front and want to encourage them to pay even more after.
Which leads to the monetisation issue. While I appreciate people differ in their attitudes to this, personally I feel that if you're going to set your stall out this way, you've really got to show the punters they're getting something for it. Even more so if you're asking for money first. I would expect decent looking items worth the price, some free bits, some vanity pieces, whatever. But everything is locked behind a paywall, and everything, right now, is about 20 things that all look very similar. And they're all one-use items, per player per team, so if you want to make your teams look different, you have a lot to get. I understand that it's an optional thing, but regardless, it's not a good look at all, and I think they know that most players will want to engage with customisation to some degree, and are trying to take advantage of that. I also know that they've said they will offer the chance to earn a lot of the content for free, through grinding. But again, there's a trust issue here. Why would you trust this company to get that balance right?
So, for now, it's next to impossible to recommend this to anyone you don't want to inflict pain on. It's a really broken, half-finished, embarrassment. I don't want to say that - I want it to be good, but right now it is not, and the slim developer response isn't doing much to convince it'll improve. Right now, BB3 is being sold on a wishful promise that it will work better in the future. I don't feel they've done anywhere near enough to earn that trust, so I'd say steer well clear for a while, and see if both their game and attitude to their customers change.