For any returning fan of the Borderlands games, this game will be exactly what you expect it to be. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel for the pre-existing formula of the previous iterations, but it is good fun.
The gameplay is at it’s most basic a loot ‘n’ shoot game and with this being the 5th full entry if you exclude the tales games, it has firmly stuck to that and for the better I say. The sheer quantity of guns you’ll come across even in this medieval inspired game is mind boggling. Just when you think you won’t need a new gun for a level or two, you RNG a enchanted legendary assault rifle with no reload, fire damage and homing firebolt strikes. It’s truly grand.
Now before I get more into the gameplay I should probably mention the obvious. This is a spin-off from Borderlands 2 DLC, the dungeons and dragons inspired Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. I’d say that’s still the best expansion in the entire series. So, with this game you now have a full fledged 20 hour campaign and around 50 side quests. Expanding upon the original expansion.
The game looks top tier. I’ve always thought for the time when a Borderlands game comes out it looks phenomenal in it’s graphic novel style worlds. This is no different. The open level areas all look wonderful. Every game seems to add that extra notch in quality and finer detail then the last. From the more detailed weaponry, cell shading and details on skin or fabrics, or how the maps get bigger. Adding more variety, along with more scenery, really padding the game world out. I do find that even though this is supposed to be a high fantasy setting, the fact they stuck with more modern styled guns is a bit odd. I get the logic in it, but I’d have greatly enjoyed the use of more traditional medieval weapons which definitely could’ve still worked here. It’s not even a complaint I just think it’d have been cool and helped this stand out on it’s own a tad more.
I will mention briefly as well that I found this game to be hilarious, I genuinely laughed out loud regularly. From the expert voice acted dialogue of the main characters, or just random nonsense said by NPC’s. I think if you didn’t enjoy the original trilogy or the pre-sequel it’s not getting any better for you. This game has many returning characters, with Torgue being one of those and he’s more Torgue then usual, it’s stellar. This is a serious game in the sense that it’s got a big budget and has the likes of Will Arnett Andy Samberg and Wanda Sykes voicing main characters, but it absolutely doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s well written script always delivers and the banter as you cross the land or the overworld a new addition to the series, becomes all the more enjoyable because of it.
This game still has some of the nagging issues that was prevalent in 3. It’s about time they improved on the inventory, trying to wade through 60 weapons,armours,rings,amulets and wards is cumbersome. I often would sell a gun I was keeping by accident as it would flicker between how it wanted to organise them just as I pressed sell on a shitty shotgun I didn’t want.
Another issue I think the main campaign even though an improved villain and story to 3, still was short, lacking in actually having the villain be present. Most of the boss fights weren’t hard or as engaging as they should be. The final battle against the Dragon Lord was far to easy. A lot of weaponry is unbalanced I all but didn’t use snipers and rocket launchers. I found shotguns to be worthless as well. I understand balance is needed and they fit into your character builds. Not having true vault hunter mode and a level cap of 40 also felt like missed potential. I felt the game didn’t start to feel really borderlandsy until I had pretty much done everything. Legendary weapon spawns weren’t all that great, luckily when they happened they were worthwhile.
An improvement though was having each character as a solitary main class, and then having a sub class you can use. This means you only have two skill trees to put skill points into but really helps varied gameplay. Especially if you want to go through it all again. You also have hero points which can go into permanent buffs to certain attributes, like higher health and ward or higher chance of hitting a critical hit. So around level 30 the character build really comes into it’s own and starts to become real fun. Again, though hindered by the low level cap of 40.
The game does lean far more into D’n’D, by making you feel like you are building a character rather than just picking a few stats to put a lot badass tokens into. As well as improving the melee a smidge, it still misses the mark somewhat, in that you can just not use it and not be penalised for it. Doing certain actions like finding all 4 shrine pieces or completing all the rune challenges grant permanent increases to your stats as well. Along with lucky dice hidden throughout the lands, this increase loot luck, but even sat at over 5000 by the time I finished I didn’t feel it was particularly worthwhile. I feel this also ties into the lack of mini bosses, and only 4 side quest were really worth your time. Having more of those would make for an easy improvement.
Whilst you wander between quest areas you traverse the overworld, which has loot, side quests, and dungeons to explore. I say dungeons but these are just mini areas where you fight off between 1 and 3 waves of easy enemies. I would have preferred actual dungeons with mini bosses, something that fits nicely into it’s theme. These are also similar to the bandit camps that spawn or a random skeleton catches you and initiates the same sort of fight. I’d argue it’s just weak padding that can again be easily ignored for the most part.
Overall I’d rate this a hefty 7/10, Positively Tasty.
I did really enjoy this game, it was a blast start to finish. It could’ve done with being longer, a level cap of at least 50, with better boss battles and true vault hunter mode. It was funny, well voice acted along with tight gun-play. It’s just lacking those few extra endgame bits to really flesh it out and this was somewhat let down with it’s mediocre DLC which is somewhere this series usually excels.
Released March 25th 2022 on Sony Playstion 5.
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