Developer: Cyanide
Publisher: Nacon
Platform: PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Blood Bowl 3 – Review
It’s been eight years since the last installment of the main Blood Bowl series has been released. We found the game to be quite enjoyable, and truth be told, we didn’t expect a new installment to be released anytime soon. Now, however, Blood Bowl 3 has been released, and we had high hopes for this bloody strategy sports game, but in the end, the new game was a massive step back in terms of quality and content. After many gaming sessions with bugs and unresponsive controls, here’s why you should best avoid Blood Bowl 3 in its current state.
Story
Outside of some funny commentaries, there isn’t that much story to be found in the game. You’ll get a few short cutscenes in-between matches, but these don’t really add that much to the overall story value of the game.
Graphics
Graphically Blood Bowl 3 looks very dated. While many of the character models are very much reminiscent of the tabletop models, they look a bit rough around the edges at times. We did love the overall color tones, as this also reminded us a bit more of actual painted figurines. As a whole, when comparing the new game to footage of its eight-year-old predecessor, we wouldn’t say that this is a real next-gen upgrade. This is especially noticeable when taking a closer look at the spectators in the arena, or the other NPCs, as they look rather horrible. We see the same characters copy-pasted over and over again, as even the cameramen outside of the pitch loop the same animations over and over. We did encounter a few graphical glitches, such as severe flickering in the menus, but these were minor issues.
Sound
Outside of the commentaries, the sound design is quite disappointing. Not only are the sound effects very basic and repetitive, but the overall sound mixing is also horrible. If you don’t immediately go to the menu to alter certain settings, you probably won’t even hear the commentaries due to the sounds of the spectators and the very odd sound of ocean waves. The latter is probably not truly the sound of the ocean, but for some reason the background noise makes it seem as if you’re constantly on a boat in the midst of a storm.
Gameplay
Blood Bowl 3 is like its predecessor based on the tabletop game with the same game. In this blood-soaked sports game, you’ll play a turn-based version of American Football, albeit with a bit more blood and gore, and a lot of plays that would be frowned upon in real life. In short, it’s up to you to position your team to make decent plays, be it to take out opponents, or simply to be able to score a touchdown. The offset is actually quite simple, but learning the mechanics and finer intricacies of the game will take you a while.
Sadly, it soon becomes a matter if you actually want to learn the game’s mechanics. During the tutorial, the first issues were already becoming painfully annoying. Outside of the already horrendous controls for this game, the game often also doesn’t register inputs. When following the steps of the tutorial, certain commands did not register, and there was an annoying bug that even though the game put the cursor on the character we had to select, we still needed to move our cursor away from the character first to then move back to it to be able to select it. This also happened when we had to perform certain actions, we then again had to move around the cursor first in order for it to work. It even got to a point where one step of the tutorial was so bugged that it didn’t even give us the prompt for the action we had to perform until, for some reason, it suddenly popped up out of thin air. This was already a fair warning for things to come.
Luckily, during the actual matches, we did not encounter too many bugs, but the overall gameplay loop just wasn’t satisfying. More than often our AI opponents would be able to make plays that would fail repeatedly if we tried the same, but playing online proved to be slightly more entertaining. The same can be said about the Hotseat mode, where you could play locally with a friend.
To top things off, this game has a lot less content than its predecessor, which is already a shame, but it also includes a lot of microtransactions for things that were free in the previous title. It’s a huge letdown that a sequel that was long overdue takes such a massive step back and then adds microtransactions while the game is still a buggy mess.
Conclusion
Blood Bowl 3 does have its moments, but these are overshadowed by horrible sound design, dated graphics, an unsatisfying gameplay loop, and a lot of bugs. We were quite stoked about this release, as it would give the Blood Bowl game series a new lease on life, but with less content than its predecessor, microtransactions, and a generally unpolished feel, you’re probably a lot better off playing the previous game.
Blood Bowl 3 - Review,
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