izigame.me

Almost two hours in and I can already see why Blood Bowl 3 is considered a downgrade from its previous entries. Almost every part of Blood Bowl 3 has been expanded upon and regressed at the same time, with some new editions being welcome such as the Action Wheel allowing for players to do more than just move around and bludgeon people to death with weapons or their bare hands. However, with this new feature (new to me anyway), every other facet of Blood Bowl has been dialed back to varying degrees and any degree is bad enough. What has significantly been hurt the worst here in BBIII is customization. Many options are held behind a paywall and the epic levels of customization available to Blood Bowl tabletop players is either behind that paywall or is omitted entirely. Especially in games such as Blood Bowl, customization should be celebrated with expanded features beyond just unevenly priced one-time use items. Player customization is rudimentary and there's not even an expansion to how you can customize anything. Customizing the stadium you play in would be fun if there was a custom-built Stadium Builder for Blood Bowl to allow players to spend time and truly create the field of their blood-soaked dreams.
So many other features have been dialed back and other features have been messed with for the worst. The UI has definitely been something to get used to; without the Tutorial telling me otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to bring up the Action Wheel while in-game. I guess that's what Tutorials are for (duh) but I think adding in a visible button to access the Action Wheel should be an option for the UI as well, given that if people pick up the game after a long hiatus, I doubt they'd want to play the tutorial all again. Just saying. It's weird that Blood Bowl II nailed the layout of the UI but BBIII's user interface is jut not as user friendly. It's sort of baffling because Blood Bowl 2 had things pretty nailed down when it came to the User Interface.
For all intents and purposes, the negatives significantly outweigh the positives but some commendation should be made towards the attempts to somewhat liven up the presentation of the game, even if those efforts range from minimal to "I see what they were going for". The commentary during the Tutorial gave me a small impression that regular commentary would be a bit more varied, including random guest commentators that had varied personalities and added a new perspective to hear from while matches are going on. Instead, most of the game's commentary is mostly Blood Bowl II commentary rehashed for the third entry. with some new lines here and there that get fewer and fewer in variation. It's a total letdown because there are plenty of opportunities for Blood Bowl commentary to be as bloody and colorful as the actual game of Blood Bowl can be. More work also needs to be put into the background details of the playing field; I think the game would benefit from more interactions between the crowd and refs/players in the background not on the field or actually showing a full-fledged animated sequence of fan jumping from the bleachers/stands and charging the field to stomp on a player tossed outside the area of play. It would add the energy Blood Bowl claims to present in a fantasy world that's taken American Football to its pure and logical conclusion.
Blood Bowl 3 is a missed opportunity if there ever was one. It's a game that embodies this sequence wholeheartedly: a Thrower goes to pick up the ball and fumbles around with it and drops the thing. Reroll. Successful. He tries to lob the thing across the pitch to an open catcher and... throws it the other direction. Turnover. Blood Bowl 3 had room to be a GREAT fantasy sports game that could've built upon what Blood Bowl 2 did great. It could've focused more on player customization in almost every way, the thing many fans of the tabletop enjoy besides the blood, the violence and the feeling of trampling over a rival team before scoring a Touchdown. Instead, Blood Bowl 3 is a wayward pass that hits a ref square in the face.