Blood Bowl 3 Review (Drastak)
TL/DR:
If you're a seasoned Blood Bowl player or an eager newcomer determined to start playing, and alternatives like FUMBBL aren’t an option, then Blood Bowl 3 might be your only choice. For everyone else, I can’t recommend it.
A Nightmare for New Players
While Blood Bowl has always had a steep learning curve, Blood Bowl 3 does little to ease new players into its mechanics. The tutorial and campaign mode exist, but they fail to properly explain the rules in a way that prepares newcomers for real matches. Given the complexity of the game, a well-designed tutorial is crucial—but BB3 stumbles here.
AI Plays Like a Goblin on Mushrooms
While not the game's biggest flaw, the AI is a major weak point. Instead of following logical strategies, it often makes reckless moves, prioritizing risky actions, failing to set up proper blocks, and even acting randomly. In some cases, the AI gets stuck entirely, not doing anything before it runs out of time. This means that new players can’t rely on AI matches to learn the basics, making the solo experience borderline useless.
A UI That Fumbles the Basics
In my opinion, one of the biggest issues with Blood Bowl 3 is its clunky and unintuitive UI, which sometimes makes even basic interactions frustrating. Simple actions, like selecting or setting values, feel tedious and unnecessarily complicated. Worse, the poor UI design makes the game error-prone, leading to misclicks, accidental moves, and other frustrating mistakes that can directly impact the outcome of a match.
Better Graphics, Worse Clarity
On a positive note, the graphics have improved a lot, the models are detailed and well made, especially when zoomed in. However, in actual gameplay, it’s often difficult to distinguish players and positions. Some streamers have even made guides on which customizations to buy just to make the game more playable—which brings us to the next issue…
Microtransactions
Blood Bowl 3 leans heavily into microtransactions, pushing players to spend money on customization options. While cosmetics don’t affect gameplay directly, the customization system is far more restrictive than in Blood Bowl 2—without purchasing additional cosmetics, your ability to customize players is extremely limited.
Missing Teams and Incomplete Rules
While BB 3 follows the BB2020 rules, it’s still missing several teams, and some rules are not fully implemented, leaving the game feeling incomplete. A new team is added approximately every three months, but players must either purchase these teams or play enough matches in the current season to unlock them. For new players, this means you'll have to buy teams added in previous seasons if they want access to the full team roster.
Bugs That Shouldn’t Exist
Even beyond the AI issues, game-breaking bugs are still present. Balls can disappear, players’ status (standing or prone) or positions can be unclear, and a range of other glitches make the game feel unreliable. While patches have addressed some of these issues, they still appear, though less frequently, and can occasionally cost you the game.
Recycled Sound and Commentary
While this isn't the most problematic issue in the game, the commentary and some sound designs are recycled from the previous game. Worse, some of the commentary references outdated rules and terms, further highlighting the lack of polish of the game.
Conclusion
Blood Bowl 3 has come a long way since it's launch, with updates addressing some of its major flaws and introducing new improvements, game modes, etc. However, it remains a frustrating, unfinished experience, weighed down by an unintuitive UI, aggressive microtransactions, and frustrating bugs. That said, Blood Bowl is, in my opinion, a great game with a decent and passionate community, and it's kind of a shame that the digital version is struggling to reach its full potential.