Pinball FX3 arrived in September 2017 as the sequel to Pinball FX 2, and it came with a promise few sequels bother to make: your old tables come with you. The game launched on PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One, with a Nintendo Switch version following in December 2017.
Zen Studios developed and published it. The pitch was simple — more multiplayer, more community, more reasons to keep playing after the first high score.
Free tables from Pinball FX2
The headline feature is backwards compatibility that costs nothing. Players who bought tables in Pinball FX2 can bring those purchases into Pinball FX3 at no charge. In a genre where every table is a separate purchase, that matters.
It is the rare sequel that rewards the people who supported the last one instead of charging them again. Zen Studios did not have to do this. It did it anyway.
The game ships with a set of simulated tables and online scoreboard support, so informal competition with other players is built in from the start. You are not just chasing your own score. You are chasing everyone else’s.
Tournaments and shared leaderboards
Pinball FX3 leans harder into multiplayer than Pinball FX2 did. The game supports asynchronous competitive play, which means you do not need to be online at the same time as your opponent to beat them.
Tournament-style play is in. Shared leaderboards are in. User-generated tournaments and league play round out the package, and together they create a structure that keeps a pinball table interesting long after you have learned its ramps.
Multiplayer matchups, user generated tournaments and league play create endless opportunity for pinball competition.
That is the design goal, and the game mostly hits it. A pinball table is a solitary object by nature. Zen Studios built a social layer around it without breaking the thing itself.
The PlayStation 4 cross-play limit
One caveat is worth stating plainly. Cross-platform play exists, but for PlayStation 4 players it is limited to Steam on Windows. PlayStation 4 players can only compete with users playing through Steam on Windows.
The reason is Sony’s initial decision to prohibit cross-platform play between its PlayStation 4 and other consoles. That is a platform policy problem, not a Zen Studios problem, but it lands on the player.
| Platform | Release window |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | September 2017 |
| PC (Microsoft Windows) | September 2017 |
| Xbox One | September 2017 |
| Nintendo Switch | December 2017 |
The Switch version arriving three months later is the one to note if you want pinball on the move. The other three launched together.
What holds up and what does not
Pinball FX3 is a simulator, and it knows it. The perspective is bird view and isometric, the genres are simulator, pinball and arcade, and the themes run to fantasy and science fiction. None of that is a surprise to anyone who played the first two games.
The tables are the product. If a table does not feel right, no amount of leaderboard support saves it. Zen Studios has been building these for years by 2017, and the craft shows in the physics and the table layouts.
Single player and multiplayer are both supported. The single-player mode is where most people will spend their time, learning a table’s shots before taking them into a tournament. That is the correct order, and the game lets you follow it.
What Pinball FX3 does not do is reinvent pinball. It refines a formula Zen Studios already had. The backwards compatibility is the most generous thing here, and the community features are the most ambitious.
The PlayStation 4 cross-play limit is the most annoying. It is a real gap in a game whose entire pitch is competition with other people.
Score: 8.4/10
The critic aggregate sits at 8.4 out of 10 across six outlets, and that number is about right. Pinball FX3 is not a breakthrough. It is a confident, well-built sequel that respects the people who bought the last one and gives them more ways to compete.
The free carryover of Pinball FX2 purchases is the detail that matters most. It says Zen Studios sees its players as a community to keep, not a market to re-charge. The multiplayer structure backs that up.
The Sony cross-play restriction is the part worth watching. It is not Zen Studios’ call, but it shapes who you can play against on PlayStation 4, and that shapes whether the tournament features are worth your time on that platform.
If you are on PC, Xbox One or Switch, the pitch is clean. If you are on PlayStation 4, know what you are buying before you buy it.
The tables are still the thing. Everything else is scaffolding around them, and the scaffolding here is better than it has ever been.
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