With thanks to the folks at Cyanide Studios and Nacon, we’ve been spending some time putting together our full Blood bowl 3 review. Blood Bowl 3 is releasing for PC, Nintendo Switch and both generations of PlayStation and Xbox. For our review and common-sense parent’s guide, we’re covering the title on PC and Xbox Series X. as ever find our full video below or keep reading for our extended written review.
The Basics – What is Blood Bowl 3 About?
Blood Bowl 3 takes the reins of one of my favourite franchises. Again adapting the Warhammer tabletop title to the digital world, Blood Bowl 3 releases some seven to 8 years after 2015’s Blood Bowl 2. This new iteration has made some additions as well, and players are promised new teams, redesigned passing mechanics, new customisation options and specialist pitch-based rules.
Blood Bowl 3 allows both online and offline play, with a lightweight single-player campaign that brings some narrative elements, and of course a whole lot of blood (a bowlful, possibly).
Sadly, while it’s one I’ve been incredibly excited for, bugs, hangs, glitches and an in-your-face monetisation system has left me feeling a little lost. We’ve had a significant number of hang ups in game, and as the title doesn’t have a mid-match save, whole winning matches are lost (often in the final turns).
Is Blood Bowl 3 Safe for Children?
Rating: 2 / 5: Caution Advised .
Blood bowl is rated by PEGI at 16 and above, and by the ESRB at T for Teen. Blood Bowl is packed with violence, but in this rather cartoon-esque Warhammer world that comes pretty much as standard. In addition to the frequent bloody tackles, knockouts and even death on the pitch, off the pitch is worth a look as well. Online play brings contact with other players as standard, but of special note is Blood Bowl 3’s customisation options.
You can customise each area of your players, but to do so you’ll need to spend real world money to purchase equipment. What’s worse is that each single item is used on one single player type for one single race. With all this in the way, drug mentions by way of alcohol seems a pretty small element, but that’s there too. In addition here, we also have some sexualisation of female characters, with cheerleaders often dressed with only a few scraps of fabric. Certainly for us, it’s not one which we’ll be letting the Micro-Bandits get their hands on for some time and we’d recommend you ensure any payment capabilities are locked down before anything else.
Is Blood Bowl 3 Accessible?
Rating: 2 / 5: Intense.
In terms of gameplay, the turn-based nature of the title makes it pretty laid back and easy to use. You will have to think about things, but you have the time and space to do it with a relatively lenient player timer for your turn. Sadly, a lack of save points within matches, frequent crashes and an incredibly confusing UI mean that outside matches it is hard to find your way around, and pick up and play capability is drastically reduced. Overall, because of these issues, Blood Bowl 3 is getting an accessibility rating of intense.
The Run Down – Our Five-Point Rating for Blood Bowl 3
Gameplay – 2: I was really looking forward to this instalment in the franchise but it has let me down significantly. Getting into a game is tough enough, but in-game we’ve had frequent stalls and hang ups. Sometimes this means that the AI players take 60 seconds to ponder the actions before moving anybody, which feels like an eternity when you’re sitting and waiting. We’ve also had many times where the game just hangs, with no crashes, without resolving the action your or your opponent has taken. We’ve waited over 30 minutes in some cases, before then having to quit out of the whole title and restart. When this happens towards the end of a match, with no mid-match saves, it’s soul crushing.
Visuals – 2: The overall in-game visuals are quite nice, and certainly an improvement. Unfortunately though, each player looks pretty much the same. Each species has its own individual units but apart from that all unit types for the species just look the same, unless you pay to customise their armour. Sadly the UI for the title is baffling, making it incredibly hard to get into online or offline matches. It’s so hard to find your way into an online game that after having one we gave up, and set off on an expedition to find the single player campaign instead.
Audio – 2: The audio is well acted but incredibly repetitive to the point that it actually made me angry. At one point, while waiting for the AI opponent to take one action, I heard the same paragraph spoken by the commentators three or four times, which made the incredibly long time between actions even more unbearable.
Narrative – 3: the promise of a single player campaign is a little lofty, and while there are some good progressive elements the rest of the game gets in the way. I quickly took to ignoring story elements because I knew I would have to hear them two or three times when restarting matches after the title crashed out.
Replay – 1: there would be great replay value here, but sadly it’s incredibly hard to find online matches, it’s tough to work out how to use different teams to play different matches, and the visuals and audio repetition make it annoying to get back in game. In addition, the fact that online mode progression and offline mode progression are completely separate hampers this hugely. With all this considered, it’s going to get harder to play online as people wait for bug fixes and optimisations for what has the potential to be a great title.
The Verdict – Is Blood Bowl 3 Worth It?
Pixel Bandits Touchdown Level for Blood Bowl 3 is a lacking4 / 10. I’ve been so incredibly disappointed by Blood Bowl 3 that it’s made my heart hurt. When the title is working well it’s lovely to play, but the mechanics which I love are mostly the ones which Warhammer invented 37 years ago. Cyanide Studios can fix this, but it’s one which is going to take time and a lot of effort. However, it is one which we’re consistently going to be checking in on because if things do get fixed it could be incredible. Sadly, for now, we’re saying to give it a miss.
As ever, to provide this review and common-sense parent’s guide, we received free copies of Blood Bowl 3 on PC and Xbox from the folks at Nacon.