"Borderlands 3" Review - Wound and all out of bagels

Available for: Xbox One, Playstation 4, Microsoft Windows, Google Stadia

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Look at the subtitle of this review.
Did it make you laugh?
Can you imagine any circumstances under which the subtitle of this review being used as a punchline would make you laugh?
No?
Then you understand the biggest problem with the subject of today's review, Borderlands 3, but we'll get to that.
Anybody who has been following my reviews for at least a year may know that one of the (dis)honorable mentions I do in my end of year lists is the "Borderlands award for most yawn-inducing game." I remember it like it was yesterday: I was in High School, the original Borderlands came out, and a friend I ate lunch with everyday told me it was the greatest game ever made. Then, I went out and bought it, and it was the most boring game I'd played to date. Hence, when I eventually started this blog and began making my end of year lists my own, when it came time to dedicate an award to celebrate the most boring game of the year, Borderlands was the natural namesake. Fast-forward into my college days, and Borderlands 2 came out. Borderlands 2 was excellent. In it, developer Gearbox Software solved most of the problems I (and other critics) had with the original: they crafted a great villain, an engaging and sometimes surprisingly emotional story, and some degree of variety in the level and enemy variety. My biggest problem with the series remained (which we'll get to), but the experience was actually quite enjoyable, and I ended up giving it a score somewhere in the 9's (because this was before I implemented my current scoring system). Then, there came Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, which nobody played.
Then, there came Telltale's absolutely flipping outstanding series, Tales from the Borderlands, which re-ignited my interest in the world with its excellent story and engaging characters.
In spite of the good taste that Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands left in my mouth, I can't say I was waiting with bated breath for a third game in the main saga, but then it happened, and I knew I'd have to play it for the sake of my credibility, if nothing else. Well, now I've finished Borderlands 3, so the question must be asked: Is it good?
Make no mistake, dear reader, Borderlands 3 is, without question, the greatest entry in this saga to date. Compared to Borderlands 2, many aspects are weaker, but when it comes to the aspects that desperately needed improving even in Borderlands 2, Gearbox brought their A-game to this project, and the results are outstanding. So ready your backpacks for overload, put on your hockey masks, and let me explain why you owe it to yourself to go out and purchase Borderlands 3!

Why don't we start off with the negatives? If you're familiar with my writing style, you know that I tend to start these reviews off with my notes about the story and characters...and that's an area where Borderlands 3 pales in comparison to Borderlands 2. In this game, you (as usual) play as a Vault Hunter (a mercenary in search of mythical treasures locked behind ancient alien vaults) on the planet of Pandora. However, instead of an evil corporation, this time the wastes of Pandora have been taken over by twins Tyreen and Troy Calypso, who have rallied the planet's bandits behind them by way of their cult of personality: The Children of the Vault. The Calypso twins promise their followers a place in paradise if they help in the search for and the opening of what the twins call "The Great Vault": a vault that contains the power to make whoever discovers it a God. Now, while the story does take quite a few interesting turns, if you remember the plot of Borderlands 2, you can tell that this premise is a little...standard. That isn't a major complaint, but it is worth noting. Now, as for the characters that take part in this well-executed but not exactly creative tale, well...it's not for lack of effort, but a lot of attention is given to the wrong characters. I get that it's going to get old to keep comparing this game to its predecessor, but at least for this section, it's a necessary annoyance. In Borderlands 2, for every character that was introduced, there were a variety of side quests that would further flesh out their stories. Similarly, for characters that were re-introduced from the original game, they didn't exactly have side quests associated with them, but the main story itself utilized them regularly enough that their stories were fleshed out just as much. In Borderlands 3, however, very little is done right in terms of the characters. Brand new characters are treated like the most important people in the world. Returning characters from the original Borderlands, Borderlands 2, AND Tales from the Borderlands are all treated like an afterthought with less than a handful of side quests shared between the lot of them. Characters that got plenty of screentime in the previous game now get basically one spot in the main story to show where they are now, but nothing beyond that. What's more, only one of the returning characters that does hold a major place in the story is done right (Lilith, in case you were wondering). The other ones...well, it isn't that they're done wrong, it's just that nobody cared about them in the first place. I defy you to find one person who wanted to see more of Tannis, yet the story pretty much revolves around her...and yeah, the story does take her character arc in an interesting direction, but it didn't suddenly make her interesting. There's one other character that takes up a majority of the story, and that's a brand new character, Ava. Ava is a teenage girl that will end up becoming a "Siren" (a magic user, in this universe) at some point. I've heard conflicting thoughts on this character, and as is the case with most of the opinions I end up having, the truth winds up somewhere in the middle. While I did enjoy her as a character, I do agree that way too much importance was placed on her when we have an entire 3-4 games worth of beloved characters that got ripped off here. Given the now monumental cast size of this saga, it was always going to be impossible for Gearbox to do all of them well in this third mainline installment, but the way that they did handle their cast still leaves a lot to be desired.
Now, for the time that I've been talking about characters thus far, I've pretty much exclusively been discussing the heroes. What about the villains of this installment, the Calypso twins? Again, I've heard conflicting thoughts. Before I delve into opinions, maybe it would be a good idea to discuss their characters objectively. The Calypso twins are........millennials. They say things like "fam" and their outreach programs for their cult are basically livestreams and intensive social media. Now that I've said that, surely you can tell why opinions on these twin villains are divided? Whether or not you'll like them depends on whether or not you like humor at the expense of my generation. I happen to curse millennials and their cringeworthy, crippling reliance on validation from strangers with every breath I take, so I quite enjoyed the Calypso twins as villains. But regardless, whether you enjoy them or not, they end up getting quite a bit of development as the story progresses. With that in mind, to anybody who doesn't get their panties in a twist when they hear people make fun of millennials, these villains should at least become somewhat engaging by the end. That being said, it's time to once again compare this game to its predecessor. Despite the fact that Gearbox really tried with these villains, the fact remains that they just aren't remotely as good as Borderlands 2's Handsome Jack. Though that isn't really a point against the game when all is said and done, it's just a fact.

But enough of all that nonsense! If you're a Borderlands player, chances are good that when you come to a review of a game in this saga, you're not looking to hear about stories or characters. So...how is the gameplay here? Well, you may recall that I've already referred to Borderlands 3 as "the best game in the saga," and the reason is the gameplay. Not all that much has been changed, in reality, but a single change they made has made all the difference in the world for me. You see, in both prior titles I ended up adopting a gameplay style that I liked to call "The Borderlands strategy"...that is to say, running past all the enemies and desperately trying to make it to the next checkpoint without dying. Now, why did I adopt this strategy? The answer is simple: I don't do co-op or multiplayer unless it's in a Dark Souls-esque context. So, in spite of the fact that Borderlands has always been more-or-less meant for co-op gameplay, I've always played it single-player. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that you have the ability to play these games without co-op partners, the entire game experience has always been balanced for co-op. So, even if you're at the recommended level for a given mission or higher, if you're playing solo in prior titles, you're playing against enemies scaled to fight an entire squad of 4 players at your level. That was my experience, so in order to get through a Borderlands title within the century, I'd always have to just run through enemies, get through checkpoints, then die to bosses a bazillion times. However, in Borderlands 3, a single change has been made: the inclusion of an "easy mode." That's kind of a condescending way for them to describe it, but the gist is that they now have a mode that's more tailored to single-player gameplay! In spite of its name, easy mode is no walk in the park. I still died on a number of occasions, however, literally every encounter with enemies was manageable-but-challenging if I was in the right level range! And that's another thing that's been fixed from previous titles. In prior titles, the recommended level for main missions would randomly jump up by 3-4, ensuring that you'd be forced to go do side missions after just about every plot mission, furthermore ensuring that the plot pacing went out the window. I don't know if it's different in the regular mode, but in the easy mode, at least, there were only one or two occasions where I had to do side content in order to meet the recommended level, and even so, it was only about 1 level each time. But that's just a guess...because the side content is good enough the I felt compelled to go out and do it of my own volition on several occasions! Side missions have interesting storylines and great rewards, and something about not being constantly forced to do it made me feel compelled to do it often!
Oh my, it seems I've been talking at length about anything but actual gameplay in this gameplay section! Silly me! It's just been so gratifying to be able to subjectively enjoy a Borderlands title without having to rely on only its objective qualities to get through! For once, I could actually appreciate the gameplay! But anyway, now, let's talk about combat! As always, at the start of Borderlands 3, you choose to play as one of 4 vault hunters, each with different abilities. Only this time, the word "abilities" is actually accurate, as each vault hunter now has 3 skills they can activate rather than the usual single skill. In every Borderlands title, for whatever reason I end up playing as an entirely different type of vault hunter from the kind I played in the previous title. In the original Borderlands, I played as Lilith (the siren), because I was in high school and magic + tits + confidence is a hell of a combination. In Borderlands 2, I played as Zero, because at the time I'd just discovered my love of stealth and assassination games...so kind of a different awakening that the one that lead to me playing as Lilith...but I digress. This time around, I elected to play as Zane, the soldier character who uses gadgets...because I've progressed from standard teenager to college student with developing gameplay tastes to boring ass adult in the lifetime of this saga. All this is to say that I've only played through Borderlands 3 once, which, by default, is 1/4 of the overall experience. If you've played this game as any character other than Zane, it's entirely possible that you'll disagree with my opinions here. With that out of the way...
As I may have mentioned, each character has a total of 3 skills they can activate, as opposed to the usual single skill they have. Now, you can't use all 3 skills at once, but you have two choices: You can choose to equip one skill, or you can choose two of them at the cost of your ability to throw grenades. Grenades can be incredibly useful, so whether you choose the former gameplay option or the latter will depend on you! As for me...let me take a step back. Zane (the character I played as, in case you've forgotten) has the following skills: A drone, a shield, and a holographic clone. I saw fit to equip both the drone and shield, since I judged that the limited grenade usage was inferior to the cooldown-dependent-but-infinite skills. So there was an offensive and defensive move at my disposal, and that was possibly what made this game for me! Now, before I talk specifically about how I used these skills, a bit about gameplay in general. Like in prior titles, Borderlands 3 is a first-person "looter shooter," so gameplay is made up of shooting people with guns, finding guns with better stats, and shooting people with those new guns. That's really all there is to say about the base game model. There are several different types of guns (pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, etc), and there are several different in-game corporations that make the guns, each with its own spin on the gun type. The guns you choose will ultimately depend on what you value in a shooting experience. If you think you just want to equip the guns with the biggest damage output, I believe you'll find yourself surprised by what you actually end up valuing in the end. Given my prior Borderlands experience, I thought for sure that I was going to be all about base damage. However, as the game progressed, I found myself naturally gravitating towards guns developed by the Jakobs corporation. It didn't matter what type of gun: I typically had a pistol, a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a sniper rifle equipped, and for all these types, every time I could replace my current model with a Jakobs model, I found myself jumping to do so. The reason? Jakobs guns emphasize accuracy and actively reward sharpshooting, so not only was tactical aiming rewarded with extra damage (as it is with all guns), it was also rewarded with additional effects. Plus, weapons by this corporation had punchier, old-school weapon kicks. Now, Jakobs is but one corporation that makes the in-game guns, so I've described maybe 1/5 of the overall weapon feels/side effects that you can come across. That's how much variety and room for personal taste exploration there is in this game!
Now, for a little bit on how the new skill system gives more player freedom! As I may have mentioned, for my playthrough, I ended up using my drone and my shield. In previous games, you just had the one skill and it had pretty much one use. In Borderlands 3, however, I had a couple ways I could use the two skills I equipped:
1) If I used the drone, enemy numbers would thin pretty naturally.
2) If I used the shield, I'd be immune to all enemy fire for a certain amount of time.
3) If I used the drone while the shield was still recharging, I had an insurance policy in case my lack of shield caused me to lose my health.
4) If I used the shield while the drone was still recharging, I had a way of avoiding damage until it finished recharging.
5) In an arena with a ton of enemies (a situation that happens pretty frequently), I could activate both skills at once. The shield would let me get my bearings while the drone started doing the fighting for me. Once both skills wore off and started recharging, I'd have a good enough feel for my surroundings to hold my own until I could use both skills again.
6) Kind of the same story when it comes to boss battles (we'll talk more about bosses later, but for now...). Upon entering a boss arena, I could activate both skills and observe the boss' attack patterns while simultaneously dealing damage. It didn't always mean I won on the first try, but it hardly ever took me more than two tries to beat any boss in the game because of how versatile the new skill system made gameplay!
That's just 6 of the overall uses applied to general situations...but in reality, I was able to make hundreds of spur-of-the-moment decisions based off of my skills thanks to Borderlands 3's changes.

Now, in the last paragraph, I mentioned boss battles as a point we'd touch on a little later. That's because I've never, in my life, seen as much boss variety as I did in Borderlands 3. It isn't just that the bosses themselves are varied...they are, but that's just one piece of the equation here! Boss arenas, attack styles, and unique challenges are always surprising! It doesn't matter if you're doing a main quest or a side quest, if you're going to face a boss, you'll have no idea what to expect, and you'll have to watch carefully and learn what makes the boss different in order to survive. One example that sticks out in my mind is an early-game boss, "Mouthpiece." The entire battle has this techno music feel backed up aesthetically by neon colors on both the squares of the arena and the boss' shield, and as the battle progresses, the music speeds up and certain sections of large speakers on the walls of the arena start charging up and unleashing damaging sound waves. With that in mind, the battle plays like some kind of EDM danceoff, where you have to hop around the arena to get around Mouthpiece's shield all the while watching out for speakers that are going to damage you. Another example is a later-game boss, "Pain and Terror" (voiced by Penn and Teller), which essentially amounts to a battle against a giant robot that simply stands in the center of a circular arena. That normally is a sign that not much thought went into a boss fight, but in this case, it's simply a test of your decision making and ability to adapt to new attack types. This boss has several different attacks, several variants of these attacks, and can launch more than one of these attacks at once, causing the player to have to do some mental math to determine what parts of the arena they'll be safe in when they see one or more different windup animations. In addition, the boss has far more weak points than you need to effectively kill it. The catch is that this boss is gigantic, and all these many weak points are teeny-tiny. Furthermore, Pain and Terror is a boss that is constantly moving. Now, a principle point of boss design is "the bigger it is, the slower it should be." At first glance, Pain and Terror seems to be designed in direct contrast to this principle, but the fact of the matter is that while the boss is fast, it's also stationary...which is an interesting loophole that makes all the difference. In addition to the mental math required to determine safe spaces from attacks, the player is also required to choose which teeny-tiny weak points to target. This means that the player needs to determine which weak points happen across their line of sight most often (a task that requires that the player watch the boss' animation while they're dodging attacks), and then once they deplete and destroy that weak point (at slightly less than 25% health), they'll need to re-determine the nearest and most easily-hittable weak point, all the while memorizing a new set of attack variations. Perhaps that makes this boss sound unreasonably hard, but despite my well-documented lack of skill in terms of Borderlands, I happened to beat this boss in three tries. This is a boss that truly tests the player, but if you're observant, you can apply every learning experience from every mistake you make and beat it without wasting too much time. That, right there, is an example of truly rewarding boss design!

Speaking of rewarding, multiple critics have made a point of stressing the rewarding nature of Borderlands 3, and while I don't typically like to go over points that have been covered to death, the absolutely rewarding nature of this game deserves a bit of attention! This is a game in which you are simply showered with new guns, skins for your character, shields, weapon trinkets, grenade types, and in-game currency. Every enemy you kill drops something, every area is filled to the brim with containers large and small to open, and most of the time both enemies and containers give you multiple types of rewards. Now, only about less than 10% of the drops you get will end up being useful to you, but the loot is spaced out so well that you're as likely to find a new weapon you like hidden under a mound of dirt as you are to find one by opening a container. Rewards that you enjoy can come from anywhere you look, so despite the fact that most of the time you won't use what you get, looking through new loot is always exciting! One thing to note, however, is that your inventory size kind of works against this loot system. More often than not, I'd want to keep a lot of loot for sales purposes or "it's better than my current weapon in this way, maybe I'll try it out on a couple easy enemies later on..." purposes. But then, I wouldn't actually end up doing that, and I'd end up having to constantly drop old loot to make way for the new, better and/or higher-selling-price loot. You can upgrade your storage size as the plot progresses, but for a lot of the formative runtime, this is an issue. Now, why won't I take off any points for that? Because it's kind of my own fault for never remembering to do what I intended to do with older loot...but it's still worth noting that if you're like me in this way, the inventory size is gonna bug you from time to time.

In the introduction, you may remember that I made a jab at "the biggest problem with Borderlands 3". I talked at length about the story and characters, but they aren't the problem. The biggest problem here is that the humor just...never lands. There were one or two moments that made me laugh (including the best late-game troll I've ever seen), but this game just....isn't funny. Like, I don't think my sense of humor has...evolved, or anything...but for whatever reason, despite having mostly the same type of humor as previous titles, none of the jokes were good. And when a game relies as heavily on humor as Borderlands titles do, bad humor becomes more than a small problem. This is a game that thinks the following is funny: "I will never forgive Katagawa for destroying lazy river land! I used to take my team there to unwind! And now, I'm wound!! And all out of Bagels!!!" Like, I want you to take a second and try to determine why Gearbox thought that joke was funny. Really stretch your mind here and flex all of your humor muscles, because it baffles me that the same team that thought up some of the humor behind Borderlands 2 came up with that line! Now, that line is one of the more..."ugh"...jokes in the game, so few of the jokes are that directly bad...but the problem is that if they aren't as bad as bagelsgate, they're just mediocre and unmemorable. So...not exactly a silver lining in the game's favor. Now, I've referred to the bad humor on display here as the biggest problem with Borderlands 3, but you'll notice that this paragraph has been relatively short. It should be a testament to the strength of this game's positive's that I don't actually have that much to say about the thing that turned me off of it the most.

And with that, we come to the technical section. For the most part, Borderlands 3 is...mostly good. There have, of course, been reports of serious bugs when it comes to co-op, but as previously stated, I don't do that, so all I can report on is my single-player experience (experience that doesn't depend on internet reliability or human availability). How about we start with the good? I experienced no texture pop-in (not that the textures in any Borderlands title are ever too demanding), no hard or soft crashes, and nothing in terms of audio/animation bugs. So, from a technical perspective, there's a lot to like here. But before I throw in the "however," though, I want to emphasize the technical aspect of this game that stuck with me. The guns in this game sound and feel friggin AMAZING! Literally all technical pieces that go into the guns work together to make some of the best feeling guns in any game I've played in recent memory. This was the earliest positive thought I had about the game, so it's definitely worth noting. Now that that's out of the way...
However, as a technical package, Borderlands 3 isn't perfect. For instance, on at least 3 occasions, there were event triggers in quests I was in the middle of that simply didn't fire. On all occasions, I had to quit and restart the game. Now, that's far from a small problem, so is there a silver lining?
Yes.
Every time I reloaded, my progress was saved as if I'd progressed past that point. So, though it was a relatively frequent annoyance, it didn't have much tangible impact on my experience other than wasted time restarting the game. The only other large thing to bring up is the pause menu UI. Not only is it cluttered and requires a lot of user input to get the information they want, but...actually, let me break that last point down for you. For example, if you're trying to compare all 4 weapons you can have equipped with the items you have in your storage, you'll have to do a total of like three button presses, and it'll only compare with one weapon. A better way to do it would be to have a "constantly open" comparison section that, as you scroll through storage, compares whatever weapon you're on to the weapon of the same type you have equipped, and if you don't have a weapon of that type equipped, it compares the current weapon to the next best weapon of the same type in your inventory. If not that, then something other than the clunkey, button-press-heavy UI we get would've been nice. But that was just the inventory menu...besides that, the only major UI problem is the fact that switching between the tabs of the pause menu UI (inventory, options, map, journal, whatever) takes upwards of 5 seconds at worst, and even at its best loading times, the textures on this 2D MENU take a while to load.
Other than these big things, negative technical impact is limited to the occasional framerate drops when things get really hairy. Beyond that, the only other thing I can think to bring up is less of a straightforward technical thing and more of an aesthetic thing...which gets lumped in with the technical because it's rooted in graphics. Over the course of this game's plot, you end up going to several different planets, but none of them actually feel different from Pandora. The only real exception is the last planet that gets unveiled...other than that, the whole "other planets" thing just feels forced.

Folks, Borderlands 3 is, without a doubt, my favorite mainline Borderlands title to date. It's kind of an odd case in that this title does poorly what prior titles did well and does well what prior titles did poorly. Borderlands 2 had significantly better humor and a significantly better villain and story. Yet, despite being inferior to the prior title in these regards, Borderlands 3 propels itself forward by sheer virtue of the power of its gameplay coupled with a somehow even more rewarding loot system. Then, there's the hitherto untouched-on fact that, despite being a vein rich for excessive overmonetization, this game avoids charging the player a single Godd**m cent for the items that people play Borderlands for! Not only did Gearbox truly refine the gameplay experience for this title, they did so in a way that stands in stark contrast to the predatory business practices of other AAA titles these days. I obviously have to report on what's wrong with the game regardless, but all the positives I've listed thus far lend themselves to the idea that Borderlands 3 is not only the best Borderlands title, nor is it only one of the better games of this year, but it's also the best "looter-shooter" I've played in years!

Let us review:

Relatively poor story and some character problems - 0.3
Humor simply doesn't land and it's always there - 1.0
Tech problems - 0.5

The final verdict for Borderlands 3 is...





8.2/10 - Good
Good work, Gearbox, good work!