Blood Bowl 3 is the third part of a line of American football simulators without rules in the Warhammer Fantasy setting. The game from an online game developer Friv2Online attracts with an original mixture of tactics, sports and dark fantasy, but quickly proves that even such an original idea can be easily spoiled by mediocre implementation. What is wrong with the project, we tell in the review.
The Blood Bowl series is able to interest a player who is completely indifferent to American football. All thanks to the setting, in which not only people enter the stadium, but also orcs, chaosites, dark elves, skaven and other fantasy creatures.
Yes, and football itself has changed quite a lot here: yes, you, like in a real sports game, need to throw the ball over the opponent’s defense line, but it’s not forbidden to act much more harshly: for example, injure and even kill opponents, bribe referees, and also use the unique skills of their "fighters".
The previous part of the line, Blood Bowl 2, was released eight years ago, and the fans eagerly waited for the sequel. Well, it cannot be said that the triquel is able to please them - the game turned out to be rather clumsy and in need of improvement.
The basic rules of the project remained the same. It is a turn-based strategy game where the outcome of each match depends half on tactics and half on virtual dice rolls. Teams act in turns, and the success rate of any action is made up of the characteristics of the athlete and his opponents, the presence of other players nearby (who can give bonuses and penalties by their mere presence) and many other factors, including the appearance of cheerleaders on the field, the loyalty of the referee (which is measured by specie) and so on.
The factions are quite different from each other: for example, the orcs are good fighters, but they move slowly and pass very weakly; dark elves effectively dodge attacks, but due to the high cost, each unit has to be treasured; Skaven are fast and agile, but too frail, so raising an experienced player in a team is a great achievement. And so on: each of the twelve races has both advantages and disadvantages.
In addition, within the team, athletes also have unique skills, sometimes quite funny. It makes me laugh every time when a troll on my orc team gets his "Really Dumb" perk triggered: even though it causes the action to fail, it's hilarious every time to see how the poor fellow does not understand what is required of him and mows out of the blue.
Blood Bowl 3 does not spare beginners too much, dumping a lot of rules and conditions on them. The tutorial campaign gives you the opportunity to learn the basics of the gameplay, but you have to deal with the nuances on your own, experiment and learn from your mistakes. If you're unfamiliar with previous installments in the series, get ready to spend a few evenings learning how to start playing effectively.
Even this can scare off an unprepared gamer, but the game goes further and adds poor readability of the playing field. Athletes from opposing teams belonging to similar races are not easy to distinguish from each other, and it is also not always possible to determine who has the ball at a given moment at a glance. If the arena contains a lot of small details, it gets even worse. The same applies to the interface, with its non-informative icons, and the localization of imperfect quality.
However, it makes no sense to even talk about the features of the project, since it does not make it possible to play comfortably. It's all about the bugs, of which there are simply indecently many. From the AI hanging in the middle of the action to sudden client crashes and the lack of reconnect in a multiplayer game, the title does not allow you to enjoy the gameplay: several crashes in a row completely discourage the desire to launch it again.
And this is very annoying, because the game as a whole is not bad. That is, she has a lot of problems, but thanks to her style and setting, many shortcomings can be forgiven. I would love to spend more time on Blood Bowl 3, delve into the curious rules of fantasy American football, play against random opponents in multiplayer…
Perhaps, over time, the authors will bring their creation to a level where all of the above will become possible (especially since plans for long-term support have already been announced), but now the game feels more like an early access project than a full price release. And that's why it's not recommended to buy at this stage: add Blood Bowl 3 to your wishlist, stay tuned, and only spend your hard-earned money when this tactical simulator meets your expectations.
