Borderlands 3 - Video Game Review

The Borderlands series has been a massive part of my gaming identity. I played hard through the first game, put over 1,000 hours into the second game, and several hundred into the Pre-Sequel with all the characters and with so many legendary weapons. The Mad Max setting combined with fun characters, story, and endless weapon combinations makes it something special to me. So when I found out it there was going to be a third one (outside of the Pre-Sequel and Tales of the Borderlands) my heart exploded in joy. Then we found out it would be on the Epic Store exclusive first and I swore vengeance against Epic for being a crappy store that was stealing everything I loved and cared about. BUT NOW it is on the Steam store and for it's first two weeks on the store it was all half off. But was wait for the game totally worth it?

For me, absolutely. But I'm also a hardcore fan of the series. For me though the idea of new vault hunters, guns, enemies, and the power to slide, climb, and hijack vehicles is just incredible! I've been having an absolute blast, especially since I've been playing a lot with some friends, something I barely ever had with any other game. The Borderlands series just brings people together. The level of chaos these games bring and the rewarding feelings from killing a boss or raid boss is just amazing. I am going to try and be fair though in this review, it won't be just all gushing over this game despite my unbreakable love for this franchise.

Let's begin with the biggest part of any Borderlands game: The characters. Not the loot, I'll get to that later. We got four new vault hunters this time around, including the buff, adventure-seeking bruiser siren, Amara; the robotic sniper and master of beasts, FL4K; the drunk Scottish operative, Zane; and the mech-wielding soldier, Moze. All of them have personality and unique traits to them than the previous groups of vault hunters, with personal responses to characters they meet throughout the game and more unveiling of their pasts through interactions. Playing through Zane I learn how he is the brother of two antagonists from the previous games, Baron and Captain Flynt, is an alcoholic, has had a long and troublesome life due to his career, and quit the assassination business because of the paperwork. We got a taste of that in Borderlands 2 and it got a lot better in the Pre-Sequel, but this is where I feel more connected to these characters than the previous ones.

Each game also improved upon the playable characters and their skills and Borderlands 3 does it once again through several ways. There are now three action skills for each character. You can only pick one, except if you're Zane you can use two (at the cost of throwing grenades) and each one has a skill tree that not so much as boosts these actions, but compliments them. There are no more skills that directly affect action skills. Instead the action skill upgrades are now "augments" that can be switched about without sacrificing skill points. For instance, for Zane's (the ) clone skill you can pick two of five augments, including cryo teleportation, gaining shield from clone damage, having the clone take some of your health damage, having the clone get targeted more than you, and clone explosion upon ending it early. I personally go with having the clone get targeted more than me and cryo novas on switching places. That's me though, you do whatever you want with these crazy skill tress.

Now with there being no buy-able skills that effect action skills there's more variety in what you can do with your builds. For instance I could go Moze's grenade/ rocket launcher attachments for her mech action skill, but put my skill points into a different tree with no real negative effects. Well except that going down trees for your equipped action gives you the augments for said action. So if I did go down enough for my grenade/ rocket launchers to feel satisfied I can also put points towards my ammo or shield skill trees. With that I can make my Moze (that I'm going with) I'll have huge bonuses to splash damage while also gaining shield related upgrades without ruining my rockets/ grenades. That is a great improvement to skills and I love it! I remember for my Zer0 build in Borderlands 2 I used a lot of sniper and stealth skills, but there was also a tree for melee that clashed with my build. But in Borderlands 3 that's no longer a problem.

Against our main heroes we have our new antagonists, the Calypso Twins, Troy and Tyreen. Now in Borderlands 2 we got Handsome Jack, one of the best antagonists in video games. He was smart, powerful, resourceful, and with a very personal and understandable goal, to eradicate all bandits from Pandora and the Borderlands (AKA The galaxy). That would cost the lives of countless innocents, but to him it was worth the sacrifice. So of course we had to stop him because he was a tyrant who was going to oppress people all over, whether they were guilty or not, and was just a massive asshole.

The Calypsos are basically the result of us killing Handsome Jack and at times throughout the games I kind of wished he had not kill him so he could eradicate these new villains. The twins basically run a streaming channel that's basically the Twitch of the Borderlands universe and they use their charm and power to continually amass more followers, many of whom are the pyschos of Pandora. A streamer though has to have something unique to them to make them stand out and in this case both of them are sirens. That's right, we get our first male siren of the series and he's cruel, degenerate f#ck-head. Oh and instead of streaming games they stream murders of non-believers and followers who disobey them or just for the hell of it. Jack and the villains before were more controlled in their goals while the twins are maniacal and complete loose cannons.

So how are Troy and Tyreen Calypso as villains? Well they're not as bad as handsome Jack, but you will swear vengeance against them for multiple reasons. First, Troy dabs. Second, they are very dangerous and they are more than capable of ruining your day with their endless hordes of minions and their ability to manipulate events to their liking. Third, they continually shove their victories over you in your face to piss you off. They even post videos that make fun of the murders of your friends throughout the maps. Four, they're really annoying. Like some of their dialogue is just... Ughhhhhh!!! Awful. But they're no joke though, there's a reason why they're call the "God Twins," by the Children of the Vault (their cult).

Speaking of maps, let's talk about the world of Borderlands 3. Or in this case "worlds" because it ain't just Pandora we're vault hunting on. There's four other planets and all of them look incredible. The graphics for this game might at first not look impressive, but they style is the same, it's just the details and the quality of the cell-shading has improved a lot. We got barren deserts, rich jungles, a war-torn city, and more. All of them felt special and fitting for their respective planets. However I did find that there's an imbalance of missions and story for some of the worlds. There are some planets that have a lot of story to them and some that only have a few missions on them, including side missions. That's really bad, especially with some of these lesser planets having environments I would have wanted to explore more and learn about.

You can't have a planet without life though. And there is a lot of life on these planets. We got old enemies like psychos, varkids, and skags, along with some new enemies like the prehistoric saurians, the ever devouring ratches, and Maliwan. Yeah those jerks decided to ally with the Children of the Vault for stupid reasons/ they have a stupid prink of a CEO. But there are thankfully allies of your own, both new and old. We got Tiny Tina (all grown up and still insane), Lilith, Sir Hammerlock, and more returning to fight back. There's also some new characters, but most of them weren't that interesting other than Hammerlock's new lover, Wainwright Jakobs. There's one character especially that me and my friends despise and it's pretty obvious why. I just wish we got more of the old characters over some of these new ones.

This leads me to another complaint I do have with the game: The cutscenes. They're not bad, but there are too many and some of them I feel aren't needed. Let's look back at a really good cutscene from Borderlands 2, the one after we kill the siren Angel upon her request. After she dies we are about to get the vault key and Roland is really excited that we won. As he's talking we hear a noise and see a bit of movement behind his back. Then a second later we hear a gunshot and Roland has a hole through his chest. As he falls Handsome Jack is standing behind him, having teleported in, and just as quickly disables Lilith's siren powers. He takes her captive and we're helpless to watch because we don't want to also harm Lilith, even as she's being forced by Jack to blast us with her siren powers. That's a good cutscene.

In Borderlands 3 though there are multiple cutscenes that are long and have something terrible happening in them. Except that with these ones they drag on so long it's like, "Ummm, I'm right here... Just a few steps away... LOOK, if I was about to make I'd fill you face with bullets right now." These moments where we and our characters are just standing about (and we can't even see them in the cutscene) watching horrible things happen to our friends is terrible. If you can replace it with gameplay or let us move about and try to stop it and fail doing so that would be better than a cutscene. They still look nice and some of the character introductions were really cool, but those cinematic ones that tell story are... I don't know, I don't like them as much. Combined with the story missions not being as fun as the side missions... that's bad.

Relating to my problem with cutscenes and the characters, the writing and story for this game is... not that good. Maybe it's just that one character that I mentioned earlier and how they basically... you what? Yeah, that one character that I'm very irritated about, that character basically hurt the story a lot. They're just so poorly written and very unlikable and they're a major part of the game's story it really hurts my experience playing the game. I don't want to put the blame on single character or game element, but most people who have played the game feel the same way. I also feel that there were some big opportunities that were missed in the writing, like the idea we eventually fight both the Calypso Twins, but we get to kill only one and the other becomes the main bad guy. That would increase replayability by seeing what the other that lived would do. Additionally the idea that there are multiple vaults now kind of lessens the idea of how legendary the two vaults were on Pandora. Not as impactful.

But now for the other big part of the Borderlands series that I'm sure everyone who has played the games will yell at me saying that this is the true main focus: The loot. Weapons, shields, class mods, there's more variety than ever with them in Borderlands 3. Especially the weapons now that each manufacturer has added an additional unique traits to their brands. For instance Maliwan guns can switch between two different elements and Hyperion has frontal shields while aiming down sites. We even got a returning company with Atlas and their tracker bolts that cause all your bullets to home in on tagged enemies. And with even more variations of weapons the combinations are endless. I've had so much fun with all these new weapons and they alternative fires and it's a really damn good addition to Borderlands 3.

The customization is incredible in this game. The previous games you could only change how you looked and only with certain combinations. Now you can color freely not just your vault hunter, but your weapons as well. There are color combinations for guns like diamonds and jewels, black and red steel, even poop. That's right everyone, you can make you gun look like it's made out of poop. My god isn't that amazing?! We even got little cosmetic trinkets you can throw on the guns that just little cute keychains that swing about as you move. It's adorable. And all of this is free, no additional real money to get these colors! Unless you bought the deluxe version, then you got a golden skin for weapons. Other than that your looks and your gun looks are all at your command!

There is one major change though I don't agree with for weapons: The legendary weapons in the game are a lot easier to find. In all the previous Borderlands games the legendary weapons were difficult to obtain, requiring at least 7 runs of a farmable enemy to obtain. Here it takes at least three and that's just in single player. As of this writing the last game I played with two friends resulted in each of us getting at least three legendary weapons, some of us getting six, with only around 2.5 hours of actual gameplay. In fact there's an event going on right now that increases the chances of legendary drops from badass enemies and I've obtained so many legendaries I've had to sell them, frickin' sell them! Part of me is glad about this change, but the part of me that's a hardcore fan of the previous games also feels a bit miffed by this change. However I've discovered that after you beat the game all weapons have a rare chance to be "anointed" with an additional effect on them, so that could make for how easily legendaries are found and cause me to hunt for anointed legendary weapons for some real farming.

In the end, Borderlands 3 is a really great shooter and I'm so happy that for its first couple of weeks on Steam it was 50% off. Got the full game, all the DLC, and the pre-order bonuses all for fifty bucks instead of one hundred. What a deal! The gameplay has improved a lot and the visuals still have that Borderlands style while having more detail added to them. If only the story was stronger, we lost that really terrible character, there was more balance of missions for the planets, and the legendaries not as easy to obtain. This game is still definitely worth getting just for the gameplay and looting, but just ready for some writing and story that could be better.

Tentative Score: 8.25/10

Definitive Score: 7.5/10

I've been playing through the DLC and they're quite fun! I especially been enjoying the Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC. It's so Lovecraftian it's creepy. Like I'm getting Color out of Space vibes and that story screwed with me hardcore. So grab a friend and head back to the borderlands!