Blood Bowl 3 Review (PlayStation 5)
For our Blood Bowl 3 Review, as we welcome you to the Brutal, crazy, tactical game… this is BLOOD BOWL! The iconic death sport returns with the new video game of fantasy football faithfully using the latest board game rules and new content. Create your team, then crush, mulch, and cheat your way to the top… leaving your opponents in the graveyard.
Blood Bowl 3 Review Pros:
- Decent graphics.
- 10.91GB Download size.
- Platinum trophy.
- You get the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game.
- Strategy American football gameplay.
- The opening tutorial section covers the basic rules and is broken down into parts. (repayable).
- New Ui design that is more impactful and easy to read and understand.
- Invert the axis and sensitivity sliders for the controller.
- Blood can be turned on/off.
- Takes the latest rules from the Blood Bowl season 2 ruleset. (the latest Tabletop game Bloodbowl second season)
- Jim and Bob are back! They are the Commentators from the previous games and the staple of the series.
- Fully customizable team builder, you can name them, change outfits, colors, home stadium, cheerleaders, etc.
- Campaign mode this time round allows you to build your team and then take on the Ai I. Tournament-based events.
- Kick-off events can happen from how the weather affects the ball to extra turn bonuses or pitch invasions which includes hiring assistant coaches to help influence.
- Before you make a play a small video clip will show the outcome so you know what’s coming if you play that action.
- Turnovers are brutal in Blood Bowl. You lose possession whenever you get a player knocked out, drop the ball, miss a throw, and even fall over! Of Course, it’s the same for the opposition but man.
- Blood Bowl. Is a spin on American Football except it is turn-based, turnovers happen differently and violence is highly encouraged.
- The tutorial does a good job of explaining the rules to a new series player.
- Cutscenes are FMV and are mostly tongue-in-cheek adverts and game-day presentations.
- Knock an opponent off the pitch to have them attacked by the crowd.
- Players can be knocked down, knocked out, stunned, and even killed.
- Killed players are just that and are out of the whole game unless you manage to get a good apothecary.
- Excellent atmosphere with great voice work.
- When you click a player you can see where they can move, any dodging or sprinting they may need to do a probability percentage of success and any modifiers both good and bad.
- Sprinting allows you to go a bit further but it jacks up the chance of messing up.
- All actions are dictated by dice rolls.
- Blood Bowl is a game where you activate and move each playable character one by one.
- There is a lot of humor throughout.
- Big hits trigger an in-game cutscene of violence and it’s brilliant.
- The story is told via commentators, cutscenes, and FMV.
- The radial menu is in use now where you hold a button down and select the action.
- You can get a preview of what actions will do on the field.
- Hot seat Two players where you share the controller.
- Friendly match mode – hot seat, against Ai, and online.
- Competition mode allows you to join and create your competitions.
- League mode is also online only.
- Game settings – turn time limit (competitive/1/2/3/4/unlimited time).
- Buy perks before a match.
- You can bribe the referees.
- Knocking an opponent out of the field has the crowd beat them up.
- Players can get injured, sent off, or even killed.
- Blood Pass is the game’s equivalent of a battle pass with free and charged tiers.
- New teams get rolled out with blood passes and store purchases.
- You can and are encouraged to have many teams and leagues on the go at one time.
- The shop has real money purchases and cycles through stock periodically.
- Free premium currency (warpstone) is doled out every week or so.
- Cross-play support.
- You can reconnect to games after a disconnect.
- The single-player mode is 5 games against the AI.
- Four actual game modes – campaign, friendly match, official competition, and competitions.
- You can watch official matches through the game.
- Create and save your formations.
- A whole lot of fun can be had.
- More a strategy game than a sports game.
- Earn exp and increase your player level to unlock new rewards.
- Offline mode is available.
- Twelve factions – Black Orc, Elven Union, Imperial Mobility, Dwarf, Orc, Chaos Renegade, Skaven, Nurgle, Dark Elf, Chaos Chosen, Human, and Old World Alliance.
Blood Bowl 3 Review Cons:
- I swear they have changed Jim’s voice as it doesn’t sound the same or have the same energy as the last game.
- Competitions are online only.
- It is a lot to take in and new players will struggle for a few hours.
- No game difficulty for AI matches.
- In-game purchases are for customisation items and they are not great and expensive.
- All menus are the stick and the d-pad is not recognized.
- The camera is not perfect and still has issues like not tracking correctly, and it’s clunky to move.
- The game overall doesn’t feel as content-rich as the last game vanilla or otherwise.
- The tutorial is very basic for new players.
- So many of the customisation items are locked behind real money paywalls.
- Match settings are just how strict the rules are.
- The AI is very sporadic and dumb most of the time, they will take forever to make a move, they will not play the best possible action and so more.
- You have to set up a whole separate game account with Cyanide.
- At times the menus are a pain as it’s so easy to quit out or leave a menu and reset all settings.
- The game doesn’t offer a tutorial or menu to let you brush up on the rules instead you have to play these drawn-out tutorial matches.
- Cannot rebind controls.
- No way to change the timer in campaign matches.
- You get helpful video pop-ups of actions in the first game then it disappears and you can’t use it.
- The text pop-up even has a timer.
- Dice rolls are random which is fine but I tell you, the Ai sure are lucky and I sure am unlucky a lot of the time.
- No Colourblind option.
- You can skip cutscenes.
- Every step forward has three steps back.
- Doesn’t feel on par with base Blood Bowl 2.
- It’s not a great experience playing solo.
- Cannot rebind controls.
- Cosmetics you buy are for one character and are for one-time use. This is not stated anywhere.
- Had it where it does not unlock the next part of the campaign.
- Incorrect scores are shown at the end of a game at times.
- Offline and online are completely seperate so you have to start again, and build teams and leagues as they cannot go from off to online and vice versa.
- No way to speed up the AI turn phase.
- Going online or offline is very slow to action.
- The text is very small and there is no way to change it.
Related Post: Kirbys Return To Dream Land Deluxe Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)
Blood Bowl 3:
Developer: Cyanide Studios
Publisher: Nacon
Store Links –
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7/10
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7/10
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6/10
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6/10
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7/10
Summary
This was supposed to be the latest and greatest entry into one of the best tabletop sports games on the market. It’s had delays and 8 years to hone the excellent work of the last game. I couldn’t wait to get stuck in as atm I am painting my undead team after that I have my nobility and orc teams so yeah Blood Bowl is huge here at the Gert Lush complex (check out our socials for pics and updates). I cannot believe u have to say this though, do not buy Blood Bowl 3, it is broken it is barren and it is a huge step back not only in terms of Blood Bowl 2 but also the original Blood Bowl game! I just don’t get it, the animations are reused as are a lot of the team assets, and the AI is even worse than last time with decisions and timekeeping, taking a whole turn to just move forward is common. The bugs are the true enemy with game scores not working right, games crashing out and you losing all progress, how dice rolls always screw you over and the Ai gets perfect ones is frustrating. They have made the game look better in terms of the stadiums and pitches but it is the only new thing I can see. I mean they did revamp the menu system and make it a more radial dial effect which is fine but I also know people in my circle didn’t care for it. The game just feels empty with a campaign, quick play, and then online modes to satisfy. Online is the way to play this but even then you have to pay for an online sub like Plus or Gold, and then you have to pray that you don’t get disconnected because you cannot rejoin (it’s coming in an update!), and it’s all just a massive step back. I mean one item on their roadmap for the game is a pause game option! But wait, they managed to add in cosmetics for real money, oh yes the dollar is strong here and what they don’t tell you is anything you buy with real money whether it be DLC skins or cosmetics, is one-time use on one character! A total rip-off and a real shit show of how not to do cosmetics. I’m not going to keep beating the game up, I’ve made my point and shown my disappointment, I will be checking back in every patch because I want this to be good, I would love to have another online Blood Bowl league going but at the moment il stick to making and painting my miniatures as the only disappointment I get there is my paint skills or lack of. Overall leave Blood Bowl 3 alone for now and check back in in a few months… Hopefully.