What the hell is going on? It's not even time to celebrate the renewed quality of games based on the Warhammer universe, when two painful and unexpected missteps arrive: the first is Darktide, which has already been talked about a lot, while the second sees to the latest effort as the protagonist of the French Company Cianuro. As you will discover if you continue reading. Blood Bowl 3 review, there would be some interesting new features if only they had given the developers time to complete them...
Where were we?
Quick recap of previous episodes. Blood Bowl is a strategy game from Game Workshop in which the different fantasy races of Warhammer confront each other Grotesque and violent American football.. Orcs against elves, Skaven against chaos warriors and of course a lot of hobby with miniatures and stadiums to assemble and color. After having worked on the video game Chaos League, clearly inspired by the Games Workshop board game, the French people at Cyanide proposed to the British company to transform it into an officially licensed product.
The agreement was reached and in 2009 Blood Bowl, the video game, was launched (the second in history: the first was developed by SSI in 1995 on DOS). The peculiarity of Cyanide's first Blood Bowl is that it can be played both in real-time mode, therefore in a kind of mix between FIFA and Madden, and in turn-based mode, where it practically offers an almost perfect transposition of the board game. Audiences respond positively, but hate the action mode, which was, in fact, completely removed in 2's Blood Bowl 2015.
Blood Bowl 2 debuted in a rather problematic way, but Cyanide managed to satisfy user requests and after a year found itself with a more than decent game, capable of conquering even the most passionate and selective audience. Today Blood Bowl 2 has a lot of content, well-established gameplay, costs little and almost all bugs have been resolved and archived. The only problem with Blood Bowl 2 is its age: seven years, for a game that has never been able to rely on who knows what funding, is really a lot. It was fitting then that Cyanide would try again, and right now, with Blood Bowl 3. richer, badder and more modern from the previous one.
Furthermore, everything seemed to herald a return in style: the team now has some experience, the Games Workshop name is finally gaining prestige in the video game sector as well, and investors already had a vague idea of how much it could sell. . However, here we are, condemned to a sequel that is appetizing on the outside, but dangerously raw on the inside.
false start
When playing Blood Bowl 3, you immediately sense that the people who developed it did everything they could to make the best Blood Bowl possible. The care taken in the modeling of the different units, the possibility of customizing each member of the team in detail, the ideas to make the game experience more dynamic, faster and fun despite the extensive time of the base game, are all elements that show that There was no lack of good will. However, something must have happened if after about eight years you release such a regrettable sequel to stores: there are too many errors, crashes and server disconnections too, even the graphics would need that extra coat of paint in certain circumstances. Even the graphical interface is confusing: during the game you don't really know what and where to click, important messages arrive through anonymous black windows, special events are unclear and completely lack the illustrations and descriptions present in the previous game. There is no care, there is no precision.
Is everything missing?
The statistics are difficult to access, it is difficult to read them, we have not found a simple and intuitive way to even take a look at the tournament and championship rankings. The ability to save mid-game is still missing, and considering its length, it would have been very useful. With the introduction of microtransactions and the season pass, the progression system is now doubly linked to the online one; Fortunately, it is still possible to play offline, but teams created in one mode cannot be used in any way in the other, also to avoid cheating.
Il new economic model It seems clear: the DLC of old games have been replaced by the same division into seasons that is seen in many other titles, especially free to play ones. At the moment, however, we do not know how the offer will be balanced, and doubts increase if we look at the prices and limitations of the store and the lack (from what we have been able to intuit completely) of elements that can be unlocked by playing. It is good to be able to choose, among other things, which is the official stadium of our team, it is a shame that in the dedicated menu there are no others to choose from or information on how to unlock them.
A bitter match
Blood Bowl 3 is bitter because it's blatantly mismanaged, bitter because you know that a year from now it will most likely be a great game, maybe even the best of the three. Now, however, it's just a work in progress on servers that have hopefully found their stability. If you then manage to play, you get even more angry because there is a great game below, faster, more responsive and potentially much more varied and spectacular than ever before.
The truth is that despite years of delays, Blood Bowl 3 just isn't ready yet - it's a nice early access early in its run. What will make it fail or succeed is not what the game offers today, but what it will be able to do from now on, starting with the first season pass which, even free, must necessarily grant something to its users and fill the many boxes. empty.
The classic
Blood Bowl, this is also Blood Bowl 3, of course. pure strategy. You have to understand how to position yourself on the field, what the strengths of each player are, and their game system allows you to try your luck even boldly, offering us hilarious and daring actions in return. Players can die permanently after one inning, or be injured during one, two or more matches, and can also retire due to old age: this is why it is necessary that the team created be renewed after each tournament. All actions are decided by the game's special and now iconic dice. Do you want to throw an opponent to the ground? Roll the dice and see if you can, whether you want to pick up the ball from the ground, pass it to your teammates, tackle a quarterback head-on, or rush to the sideline trying to take three more risky steps than that. allowed by standard movement points. If you haven't discovered it yet, the action takes place in turns: first one team/player and then the other. But there is no point in getting bored with regulations that can be found everywhere and, of course, in better form.
How much do you bet?
Blood Bowl es A complex game but not that difficult to learn.If you are a newbie, the tutorial included in the campaign will help you. It offers a slow and cerebral style of play, but with beautiful moments of adrenaline and is perfect for relaxing after a particularly intense day or buying it in bulk to organize the Wednesday night tournament with friends. The campaign offers many different matches that will introduce you to the different teams included, which currently number twelve and will surely multiply along the way, even in this case it would be good to know exactly how and at what price.
Of course there is a lot online, with Amateur, official and seasonal tournaments.. If you feel like trying it out, diving into these rolls of the dice that can be worth a touchdown or a lethal injury, rationally it would be better to get the second game at a bargain price and in the future, if it's worth it and you feel like it, do it update. But we are aware that the appeal of novelty is strong, regardless of new graphics, new animated stadiums and short-term support. The game is there, everything else is a gamble.
Conclusions
Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam, epic games store Holygamerz.com 7.0 Readers (18) 7.4 your voteBlood Bowl 3 has everything it takes to reach the goal, but as often happens during its matches, it lost the ball along the way. The new graphics are strikingly beautiful, the new rules interesting; However, many more features are missing than have been added. Also, at the moment the microtransaction system is a little scary, but the perception could radically change when the first season is presented. Yet another early access masquerading as a full game is starting to get boring.
PRO
- The new graphics and new stadiums are beautiful.
- Faster and more dynamic experience than in the past
- Strategically superior
AGAINST
- At the moment you don't unlock anything and you buy almost everything
- The menus are even more uncomfortable and poor.
- Important features are missing
