I'm not a huge Borderlands fan, but I've played a couple of the games (besides this, I've played 1 and about half of 2). Accordingly, I don't know if this is an accurate read on the full series or just a consequence of how I've approached the series when I admit that I don't think Borderlands is compelling when strictly viewed as a series of FPSes.

Yes, there are a characteristic lot of guns, the game using a system for modular loot generation that lets it create literally billions of guns. Yes, many of these guns have pretty out-there effects. Yes, each class of character has a couple unique skills that make the experience of playing them different. Yes, the skill trees further embellish each character's whole thing, allowing for individual expression. Yes, sometimes guns will let you shoot things that you do not typically expect to come out of guns, and that never gets old.

...but, like, I'm never playing Borderlands because I find the mechanics interesting. I never look to Borderlands as a mechanically rich experience, one that teases out things you can do with guns. I never feel like I'm playing a transcendent video game with Borderlands. Gunplay is a means to an end, nothing more.

Nah, the draw for Borderlands as a series is its scenario writing and characters, and (starting with 2, maybe 1's DLC) the series does quite well at this. I skipped quite a few games, jumping from 2 to Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, so I'm sure I missed the natural progression, but holy moly is the writing in Tiny Tina great fun.

Borderlands by its nature plays a lot with absurdist worldbuilding and design, so playing out a story-within-a-story almost entirely unmoors the shackles that held the writing back. You need to have some tabletop familiarity to get some of the satire, as well as be tuned in to some of the pop culture it's referencing (bold choice, having a Monkey Island parody where Guybrush and LeChuck are lovers) - but it's SO patently silly and well-executed that even specific tabletop gaming grievances work just as character bits.

It's such a great framing device, too. Tiny Tina makes for a fun, hyperactive game master, with the cadence of the world changing to match whatever she feels like doing. Ashly Burch is a treat as always, really someone who gets into her characters' heads no matter who they are. Frette and Valentine make for fun other players, relegated to being mission control advisors because the former is too much of a metagaming munchkin and the latter doesn't know how to play. A ton of the moment-to-moment fun comes from Frette and Valentine trying to interpret Tiny Tina's offers, and it makes for such a fun alternative to having just a voice in a can monologuing to you the whole game.

But the real star of the show for my money is the Dragon Lord. Without getting into too many spoilers - this is exactly the type of character I love. His fight is kind of nothing, especially with a team of four players, but his writing and presence? Top notch.

At the end of the game, just before the credits, there's a little dedication explaining that the game was made as the team's lockdown project. How connectivity in face of a global pandemic was the most important thing the team had to keep going, and how tabletop gaming is a way to foster and preserve those connections. I think this explains a lot about the game (for one, the setup of Frette/Valentine/the Player being stuck in Tina's cave for an indefinite period of time) and about the overall sense of sentimentality to the game.

Borderlands isn't really what I think of as a "feel good" series, but... I dunno. There's something sweet about this game in particular that makes me walk away with the warm fuzzies.