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The fact that they aren’t very good at following directions, and that there’s no means of trying to communicate with any nuance what you need to them, leads into the challenge of playing effectively with other people as well. On other platforms, and most specifically on PC, even without voice chat there’s always a means to communicate with people, whether for good or ill. Assuming people are on their best behavior this can be very constructive as a teammate who is struggling to contribute can directly be told what they’re doing wrong or how they could improve. Lacking keyboard support, voice support, or even a limited set of simple commands for communication this makes for a tricky situation specific to the Switch. With this challenge in mind if you want to enjoy playing the game and not drag down your team I’d very much suggest investing some time in reading up on general tactics for playing the game more effectively and perhaps even get some pointers on specific missions, particularly the longer and more complex ones since when you’re over 30 minutes into a mission you really don’t want to see it fail because can't coordinate what to do or where to go next effectively. After dragging through some negativity that brings it back to how to ensure the game works its best for you, and a key component to that is knowing what to do. Whether it is fundamentals like always being sure to take and try to roughly manage your hostages, or perhaps tips for specific missions on simply what it is you may be looking for or trying to do in more than bullet point explanations your best bet in the game is to either lead by positive example or to have the sense to follow the lead of whoever seems to have a good idea of what to do. Knowing when to stick together, when to split up, and how to effectively break the mission up into simultaneous pieces whenever possible immediately makes the game both more fun and more challenging than everyone crowding into a choke point and mowing down waves of enemies. Moreso than almost any title I’ve played on the Switch Payday 2 is absolutely only as good as you and the people you’re playing with make it. Stripped to its base experience it isn’t hard to see the issues creep up, and they can be a bit of a bummer. That said, if you and your crew are committed to playing things smart, making effective use of your time, and working together to complete the phases of the mission it can really be a blast and offers an experience like nothing else on the system.
Justin Nation, Score:Fair [6.5]