some of the best gunplay and buildcrafting experiences i've had, there's nothing quite like it. the sandbox structure of game design is always something i love in a game, like yes give me a shitload of toys to slam together and play with! love that shit. every little thing feels shiny and new and your brain goes into overdrive thinking of what fits into your plastic castle that's held up by splash damage and ase elemental.

unfortunately, all of this is attached to borderlands 3. probably the worst story i've ever experienced to the point that i thought the writers were purposefully making it shit only to realize that they actually were trying to make me feel emotions with this garbage. it's an affront to previous entries if not only for the fact that it's UNFUNNY. if the guns and skills and abilities were all toys in a sandbox, the game itself is a sheet of metal with some rocks on it.

it truly, genuinely, seriously isn't as bad as people think. fallout discourse has predated my birth so i view this game in a vacuum as the latest entry in the "3D Fallout Series," and i didn't find it overwhelmingly disappointing because i had no expectations.

there's a wonderful sense of attention to detail and exploration, gunplay that's plenty serviceable (the best bethesda's made at the time of release) and plenty of coherent systems to get the hang of with an accessible skill system.

i dislike pretty much everything else. it's well and good fun in the moment-to-moment gameplay, but the story and sluggish pacing are suffocating and leave so much more to be desired. bethesda took the idea of "a world happening around you" and seemed to keep that as the sole worldbuilding ideology. the only things tying your role to this roleplaying game are superficial and shallow.