I remember buying and experiencing Borderlands for the first time in 2009, I grew up on the first person shooter so the idea of a co-op RPG FPS was something that I was absolutely in love with. It was fun at the time, rocking through waves of seemingly endless enemies with my buddies on late night XBL binges is something I miss dearly, but looking back at it was the series actually good? It's hard to say as I lack the memory or patience to go back and play the first two games. I generally forgot a lot of the story in each and gameplay sequences but I recalled having a good time. When EGS announced that Borderlands 3 would be it's bi?weekly free release game I downloaded it immediately because I knew that was the right price for me on a series I wasn't certain I'd enjoy as an adult. Many things have changed since I played the first two games; the first being that I've since come to dislike loot based games, the second that I have understood how critical a game's story is to me, and the third that I no longer play co-op games with the same crew and mostly game solo.
I really had little to no expectations in booting up Borderlands 3 which admittably took a really long time. It required a lot of troubleshooting to get the game to run on my 4K display at a reasonable framerate and graphical suite. If this game had come out around the time of Borderlands 1 or 2 I might have excused that, however for a 2019 release I found it waaaaay more trouble than it was worth. Finally though, I got through and was able to experience what the long wait finally had to offer, and for the initial 75% of the game... I was not impressed.
Character and narrative writing in this game is absolutely abysmal, maybe the worst in a Triple-A title that I've played. It felt like the writing team wanted to make every line a joke, make everything humour, except none of it was funny. I was genuinely impressed with how low-ball and awful the character conversations and expose's were, to the point that once a character started talking I would sprint to the next door/objective to skip whatever they were going to say. Look, the VA's did a generally good job actually voice acting, but the subject matter they were given was laughable. I don't want to sound like a snob, because I probably often do in my longform reviews, but I implore whoever plays this game to contrast it to their favorite narrative based title in the way the characters interact. Humor is usually written in a more tongue-and-cheek or nuanced manner, rather than trying to face-stuff punchlines and gags at every opportunity. Character archetyping and stereotyping is done A LOT in games, especially in blockbuster titles, so I am not going to knock the game necessarily on that, but rather how poorly they do it. Ellie being the fat country girl got old REALLY fast, Tannis' quirky xd scientist gal gimmick was annoying minute one, and the f* Instagram influencer twin villains made me groan at every appearance (WHICH IS A LOT.) I challenge you, the reader, the player, the whoever, to find a more detestable and cringe worthy pair of antagonists than you'll find in Borderlands 3. I guarentee it is not possible. It's not the funny kind of cringe, it's not the wholesome kind of cringe, it's a real, real bad cringe. This cringe is so large, it may be the weapon to surpass Metal Gear.
Gameplay-wise Borderlands 3 felt pretty good at least with the Beastmaster class I picked. I never felt alone on my journey 'cause I had my trusty utility Skag who provided me with some awesome buffs and took aggro. It was nice having a freedom of movement and ways to fight with my gun setup, which Borderlands has always been pretty good at doing. For the majority of the game, outside of the skag and actual diversity of approach to combat, I felt like fighting was a slog. The waves and waves of enemies with the weapons I had picked up thus far didn't make me feel strong at all and had me taking the endless engagements quite slow. Once I got THAT Borderlands gun, and THAT second one, I felt like a badass. It's that moment I thought I'd be getting far earlier in the game, I didn't feel like a vault hunter, I felt like another soldier. Once I got my pistol that shot a triumverate of explosive rounds? Yeah I felt like I could kill anything in a matter of seconds, and I did! I'm not asking for the game to have housed a power spike much earlier in the game, I would have just preferred to have felt like I scaled with the enemies and bosses better than I did. I didn't grind but I did clear all enemies in my path through the main story. I found myself constantly picking up weapons above my level which was a little frustrating granted how little inventory space you get, thus resulting in me having to drop quite a bit of what I had obtained.
In the final quarter of Borderlands 3 I felt like everything combatwise and designwise had clicked. I was adequately strong, being able to blast through hordes of COV and Maliwan with ease from Point A to B to C to D. The beautiful cell-shaded world was painted with a jaw-dropping attention to detail in making the end feel like the end. The grandiose nature of rooms and set pieces had me in awe at the care and gravity of the scenes. If only it hadn't taken that long, that is my major gripe with Borderlands 3. On top of a middling story and poor graphical performance, the game took TOO long to get good for me. If you had taken the way the gameplay felt in that last 25% and applied it to the rest of the experience and optimized the game to run like it did in that segment, then this game would have gotten a much higher rating from me, even aside from the middling story and cast.
Borderlands 3 is not a game that I expected to have this strong of a reaction to, but ultimately I'm glad I played it and closed the book on the series. I didn't feel like it was exactly the experience I had played many moons ago, but it didn't feel too different either. If you like looter shooters or the Borderlands series thus far, the odds are that you have either played Borderlands 3 already, or would enjoy it.
I really had little to no expectations in booting up Borderlands 3 which admittably took a really long time. It required a lot of troubleshooting to get the game to run on my 4K display at a reasonable framerate and graphical suite. If this game had come out around the time of Borderlands 1 or 2 I might have excused that, however for a 2019 release I found it waaaaay more trouble than it was worth. Finally though, I got through and was able to experience what the long wait finally had to offer, and for the initial 75% of the game... I was not impressed.
Character and narrative writing in this game is absolutely abysmal, maybe the worst in a Triple-A title that I've played. It felt like the writing team wanted to make every line a joke, make everything humour, except none of it was funny. I was genuinely impressed with how low-ball and awful the character conversations and expose's were, to the point that once a character started talking I would sprint to the next door/objective to skip whatever they were going to say. Look, the VA's did a generally good job actually voice acting, but the subject matter they were given was laughable. I don't want to sound like a snob, because I probably often do in my longform reviews, but I implore whoever plays this game to contrast it to their favorite narrative based title in the way the characters interact. Humor is usually written in a more tongue-and-cheek or nuanced manner, rather than trying to face-stuff punchlines and gags at every opportunity. Character archetyping and stereotyping is done A LOT in games, especially in blockbuster titles, so I am not going to knock the game necessarily on that, but rather how poorly they do it. Ellie being the fat country girl got old REALLY fast, Tannis' quirky xd scientist gal gimmick was annoying minute one, and the f* Instagram influencer twin villains made me groan at every appearance (WHICH IS A LOT.) I challenge you, the reader, the player, the whoever, to find a more detestable and cringe worthy pair of antagonists than you'll find in Borderlands 3. I guarentee it is not possible. It's not the funny kind of cringe, it's not the wholesome kind of cringe, it's a real, real bad cringe. This cringe is so large, it may be the weapon to surpass Metal Gear.
Gameplay-wise Borderlands 3 felt pretty good at least with the Beastmaster class I picked. I never felt alone on my journey 'cause I had my trusty utility Skag who provided me with some awesome buffs and took aggro. It was nice having a freedom of movement and ways to fight with my gun setup, which Borderlands has always been pretty good at doing. For the majority of the game, outside of the skag and actual diversity of approach to combat, I felt like fighting was a slog. The waves and waves of enemies with the weapons I had picked up thus far didn't make me feel strong at all and had me taking the endless engagements quite slow. Once I got THAT Borderlands gun, and THAT second one, I felt like a badass. It's that moment I thought I'd be getting far earlier in the game, I didn't feel like a vault hunter, I felt like another soldier. Once I got my pistol that shot a triumverate of explosive rounds? Yeah I felt like I could kill anything in a matter of seconds, and I did! I'm not asking for the game to have housed a power spike much earlier in the game, I would have just preferred to have felt like I scaled with the enemies and bosses better than I did. I didn't grind but I did clear all enemies in my path through the main story. I found myself constantly picking up weapons above my level which was a little frustrating granted how little inventory space you get, thus resulting in me having to drop quite a bit of what I had obtained.
In the final quarter of Borderlands 3 I felt like everything combatwise and designwise had clicked. I was adequately strong, being able to blast through hordes of COV and Maliwan with ease from Point A to B to C to D. The beautiful cell-shaded world was painted with a jaw-dropping attention to detail in making the end feel like the end. The grandiose nature of rooms and set pieces had me in awe at the care and gravity of the scenes. If only it hadn't taken that long, that is my major gripe with Borderlands 3. On top of a middling story and poor graphical performance, the game took TOO long to get good for me. If you had taken the way the gameplay felt in that last 25% and applied it to the rest of the experience and optimized the game to run like it did in that segment, then this game would have gotten a much higher rating from me, even aside from the middling story and cast.
Borderlands 3 is not a game that I expected to have this strong of a reaction to, but ultimately I'm glad I played it and closed the book on the series. I didn't feel like it was exactly the experience I had played many moons ago, but it didn't feel too different either. If you like looter shooters or the Borderlands series thus far, the odds are that you have either played Borderlands 3 already, or would enjoy it.