The famed looter shooter series newest entry provides a much needed update to gameplay but fails to deliver in it's narrative.
Borderlands 3 is a fresh, fun addition to the Borderlands series that improves on many of the previous game’s shortcomings while losing momentum in others. Overall Borderlands 3 is an enjoyable, and highly addictive looter shooter that is well worth your time if you frequent other games in the genre.
Borderlands 3 takes you on a journey to open the great vault in a race against the Calypso Twins, Troy and Tyreen. While the Calypsos don’t hold a candle to Handsome Jack form Borderlands 2, they have an interesting backstory that gets unraveled as you progress through the campaign. With that said most interactions that you have with the evil twins are annoying and filled with corny and dated humor. The Calypsos are murder streamers and unfortunately Gearbox missed the mark when trying to mock online personalities and all of the jokes on the matter are uninspired and extremely vanilla. The Calypsos aren’t the only characters that are written poorly as most of the writing falls flat. Most of the characters feel like they should be in Borderlands 2 which came out in 2012 and most of the humor doesn’t age well.
While most of the writing fell flat, the gameplay certainly didn’t. Gun and character handling have improved significantly since Borderlands 2 with each of the gun manufacturers having a unique feel to their arsenal. Part of what makes Borderlands 3, especially in the end game so addictive is the constant chase to find more guns with the perfect role and perks to synergize with your character’s build and with the vast array of guns all of which feel viable there is hours of enjoyment to be had. The added traversal mechanics of sliding, vaulting, and ground pounding feel super smooth and add a fun dimension to combat and map traversal although it would be nice if the different locations would lend a unique flare to traversal as all the locations serve merely as a different backdrop to shoot stuff in.
One of my biggest issues with Borderlands 2 was the poor boss design. Most BL2 bosses were nothing but bullet sponges that did a poor job at telegraphing their attacks and most encounters devolved into my hugging a piece of cover for dear live hoping I don’t get one shot or destroyed by changing terrain on the map. This problem was mostly fixed in BL3. All the boss encounters had a unique arena and the bosses were easier to read so I could actually engage in the fight the developer intended me to have instead of cowering in the corner only to peak out for an occasional dps phase.
An area where Borderlands 3 has not improved from its predecessor is the UI. The biggest offender here is the map and waypoint system. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gotten lost or have been led to the wrong area because of a poorly placed waypoint. The map doesn’t help this problem either because at times there are multiple untracked waypoints on the map or the mission waypoint is on a fast travel kiosk with no direction on where to travel next. The navigation problem is further compounded by the poor performance that occurs when in the menus. When entering and tabbing through inventory or mission screens my frames began to chug. This was my biggest technical issue while playing on my Xbox One X as most of the gameplay was able to hold a stable framerate.
The endgame in Borderlands 3 is just as addicting as the first playthrough. When you complete the main campaign, you have the choice to activate mayhem mode in the normal mode or replay the campaign in True Vault Hunter mode. True vault hunter mode allows you to play all the missions through again and allows you to get higher tier loot as everything was dropping at lower levels during the first playthrough to match your characters levels. The pursuit for legendries through TVH and mayhem is fun and addicting. Add the guardian ranks to make your character an even more effective death machine the end game turns into the player finding different ways to steamroll groups of enemies and annihilate bosses. This makes trying different builds or tuning current ones a fun obsession and to be honest the reason this review is so late is I’ve been hooked by this gameplay loop and I can’t put the game down.
In closing, Borderlands 3 is a great continuation in the series. While certain aspects of the game like the writing and UI have stayed frozen in time since BL2. Many aspects have improved such as the gunplay, boss fights and traversal. If you’re a Borderlands fan or an avid looter shooter player this game is absolutely for you.
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