Blood Bowl 3 | Flashback – Missed landing

warhammerin all its various forms, is experiencing a second youth, and look no further than the collection of Adeptus Custodes painted by Henry Cavill to attest to this.

It would therefore be foolish to blame any attempt to monetize the brand, especially given some excellent works in the video game field, such as the series Total War: Warhammer and current battle sector And Chaos Gate.

We were sure that this list would grow with the arrival of blood bowl 3 but after a few games on unbelievably bloody soccer fields and confronted with the umpteenth technical stumbling block of the servers, we unfortunately had to fundamentally change our mind.

Here we go!

For those who don’t know what we’re talking about, Blood Bowl is Games Workshop’s reinterpretation of American football and one of the funniest and most successful board games of all time, with a thirty-year career behind it.

As the name suggests, we now face the third chapter of the series in digital format, which faithfully adapts the new ruleset released around 2020 and also able to take advantage of the excellent results of those obtained previous two episodes.

In short, the margins of error would be minimal, but as we said at the beginning, given the end result, the conditional is a must more than ever. a surprising mix of technical errors, shallow depth in terms of game modes and an apparent recycling of many animations and cinematics the previous iteration, the whole seasoned with an intrusive monetization stodgy.

bad games

It’s really hard for us to turn a blind eye to this list of weaknesses, also considering the numerous shifts the title has had to endure – with evolution time that unfortunately hasn’t been properly used it seems.

Nevertheless, every game of blood bowl 3 is a concentrate of pure fun, just like its physical counterpart. Just like in American football, the aim is to get the oval ball into the opponent’s end zone, only here the means are less orthodox and, on the contrary, aggressive and wrong moves are rewarded.

Listing all the rules and all the features of the twelve teams available is a titanic job – trust me, just look at a manual published by Games Workshop to get an accurate idea – but, in short, the game system is based on the constant comparison between the various statistics of each player used and the roll of the dice that accompanies the actions.

Given the overwhelming use of the classic D6s, this is it Obviously there is some randomness in the events and even a certain amount of tackle is of little use against a few A’s.

To be honest, in some cases it also seemed to us that the CPU was throwing in weird ways, e.g. an entire game completing every successful dodge throw.

Beyond these strange occurrences, the random factor does not detract from the fun – in fact, it accentuates it in a way – and doesn’t detract from the dominant tactical component.

Old World teams

It all starts with creating your own team, starting from the twelve currently available. Each race – or mix, as in the case of the Forsaken of Chaos or the Elven Alliance – has its own strengths and weaknesses, to which unique random abilities are then added for a concentrate of pure strategy.

For example, burly dwarves are an impenetrable barrier, but don’t ask them to cross yards. Conversely, the elves are skilled throwers, but their stats discourage direct approach, and a lightning bolt will often land them flat on the ground.

So it’s up to the player best build your teamnot to mention the RPG-style progression that unlocks new skills and upgrades throughout the championships.

Finally, rolling the dice adds that pinch of madness that never hurts in a game where fans can beat up anyone who gets kicked off the pitch.

Even the most desperate of moves can result in a nice six and, we won’t deny it, we got the real satisfaction of that lucky hit – not to be silly – right in the final round.

Resign

Writing down all the fun we had during the games only adds to the disappointment when seeing blood bowl 3 in an almost early access state (which it isn’t: find the standard version on too Instant play).

We ask ourselves, for example, which selection made it happenuser interfacewith icons that disappear in the background during games and with the various actions relegated to menus that are difficult to read and particularly cumbersome to activate, even with the use of mouse and keyboard.

In total, the whole title seems to be laced with an apparent approximation and what accompanies the matches is roughly cut with an axe.

Many of the animations used to underscore a tackle are identical to Chapter 2, the games end with no final cinematic and you’re thrown back into the menu with a sad black screen, and even the game action commentary just repeats the same thing for three or four repeats Sentences.

A future yet to be written

As with all branded games warhammerthen we have to open a separate chapter for i team.

Given the richness of the world created by Games Workshop, it is inevitable that all related work will be expanded over time with DLC and additional factions and also blood bowl 3 is no exception. But what really crashes is thatrepeated use of the same units even in different teamsalthough the twelve teams actually have much less variety than the big dozen.

We are really in the presence of almost surreal situations and, to name just one case, the exact same Skaven miniature – in exactly the same pose and with the same equipment – appears in both the team dedicated to the giant rats as also in that of the Forsaken of Chaos.

We don’t mind using similar pieces, but at least from an aesthetic point of view one could have changed something just to fake a certain difference.

This deficiency then returns in the game modesin both single player and multiplayer, and in arenas, since the unreleased maps really can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Despite obvious flaws blood bowl 3 It would still be a title to grind game after game, both against the AI ​​and in the company of some friends.

Unfortunately, however, for some reason Cynade and Nacon decided to do it completely separate offline and online careers and progress made while playing offline games will not transfer when connected to the internet.

In short, it is as if you had two distinctly separate profilesa problem that exploded exponentially in the first days after launch, when between unavailable servers and frequent disconnections it was really a challenge to overcome.

High costs

Fortunately, the development team has largely fixed the stability issues and interruptions during games are less frequent. On the contrary, another decidedly critical aspect has not received any optimizations: we are talking about the microtransactions.

without too many words blood bowl 3 It is one of the worst managed titles in terms of purchasable itemsbeyond a system of seasons in style Game as a Service questionable in itself and at really off-scale prices.

However, where the line is really crossed is in the management of the personalization of the units, since the objects purchased can only and exclusively be applied to a single farmer.

Want all of your goblins to wear special shoulder pads? Perfect, all you have to do is buy exactly the same protection for each greenskin, multiplying the cost.

They’re just different skins and we’re unfortunately used to DLC and expansions being used extensively for every Warhammer title, but honestly blood bowl 3 beats them all in this sad ranking.

Verified Version: PC