What Borderlands 3 could've been.
So... this game is set as a Dungeons and Dragon game, with Tiny Tina as the Dungeon Master. I love Ashly Burch's sense of humor, while a lot of people hated it, I loved 'Hey Ash, whatcha playin'?', and I love Ashly Burch's work as a VA... but I have never liked Tiny Tina, the character. How you'll feel about an ENTIRE game featuring her personality is... well, something you'll have to take into account. Bojack Horseman is here too, as the villain. Still, the story here, as usual, takes a backseat, but Tiny Tina's grating personality will be there, in the background, the entire way through. Just somethin' to keep in mind.
The first change I liked... character creation! Borderlands is the series that made me realize how important a character creator could be, as in some cases some characters looked like something I'd like to play, but this being a first person RPG... I'd still want male grunts and yells to better gel with my character. Well, worry no more, as you can pick from any of six different skill trees and edit your character any which way you want. Top-notch. Oh! And midway through the game, you unlock a secondary class! Every class comes with two ability skills and a passive ability which is always on. It was actually kind of a waste, as you Action Skills are used with R1, and you can only have one out of four possible skills equipped.
I mentioned in my Borderlands 3 entry how much the level 50 cap hurt.... here the maximum level caps at 40. Which sucks, because it's obvious that they are gonna slowly up the cap through DLC. I'm starting to dislike just how much they milk Borderlands through DLC, specially because BL3's full edition didn't come out on PS4. Regardless, 40 levels is not enough, so be mindful when spreading your stat and skill points. And, if you try to complete every sidequest, you'll hit the level 40 mark long before the game is over. Still, once you hit level 40 you start working towards Myth Ranks, which are pseudo-stat points you can invest in various passive upgrades. It's honestly a brilliant idea, although.... the sound bugs out, and you start hearing this gong sound every time you earn XP once unlocked. Incredibly annoying, and an issue that is impossible not to notice. What the hell, quality assurance?
Going back to the good stuff... There's something I have wanted ever since Borderlands 1: Melee combat. It's finally here, baby! Mashing R3 nets you melee attacks that flow into each other, and you will find equippable melee weapons such as hammers, axes and swords. I love it. It's a small addition, but it feels so great to finally be able to waltz towards my enemies and have my melee attacks be worth a damn. Grenades were axed, in their stead we get spells. Which are basically grenades, but they take funny properties, such as magic projectiles or the ability to summon an elemental meteorite. Pretty cool.
Instead of a large interconnected world, now there's an overworld which you traverse in an isometrical viewpoint. Walking on grass can trigger random encounter, which you can just melee to avoid. In this overworld you can find goodies, such as dice, which can also be found in every dungeon, that permanently increase your loot quality drop chance. There are also Shrine Pieces, collect all four of a specific shrine and you get a nice permanent buff. The game offers a decent amount of optional stuff to do. Besides encampments and ruins, which behave like small 1-to-3 round survival arenas that reward you with plenty of loot and XP, there are a few areas that are fully-fledged dungeons that are 100% optional and you don't need to visit to finish the game. Still, most of the optional content are just survival arenas, which to be fair, reward you with so much stuff that you don't really mind how they are just simple fluff to pad the game. Still, even if most side-content is like that, one's got to admit that most of the dungeons in the game are pretty large, and there are at least 5 very long sidequests that are more than just survival arenas.
That said, for as many great additions as the game has, there are some choices that are a bit baffling to me. For instance, when selling stuff there's no clear divide between what's in your inventory and what you've got equipped. In other Borderlands games both lists were clearly defined, in this one... well, hope you either marked your stuff as favorite or are keeping track of the inventory number below the list. Either way, not ideal. For this entry, we've also got more control functions than before, to the point that there's no direct shortcut to each weapon. I had to sacrifice Pings, who needs them anyways? and a few other secondary functions so that I could map each gun to the D-pad, like in previous games. Otherwise you are forced to press triangle to swap to the next weapon, which is quite frankly, ridiculous. I'm sure they could've done something better, like radial menus for pings or something.
And then there's the quest journal. In previous games, whenever you started a new chapter, the Quest menu would show you that you had undiscovered quests, and the quick travel stations would show very clearly which maps had available sidequests. That's not here. Maybe you decide to backtrack to a previous map or somethin' and discover that a new quest popped up. Maybe. Why did they remove this? It makes no sense. And a few times the quest-log got bugged and I couldn't swap my highlighted quest, so I had to exit and re-enter town. Oh! And remember how dice increase your dropped loot quality chance? It won't update until you go through a loading screen. They removed gun customization too. While I love character customization, this is a first-person game, I'd rather customize the looks of my guns, the stuff I'm actually gonna be seeing.
But easily, the worst part about the game... is how often it crashes. I stopped counting at seven 'cause I got tired of it. It's not as bad as BL2 on Vita, you can probably get at least two hours of gameplay before a new crash, but from what I've seen on forums, this is quite common on every console.
Crashes aside, this one could've been my favorite Borderlands ever. I definitely liked it more than 3, and I swear, if the game didn't crash as often... I would've liked it more than 2. I was liking it more than 2 until the crashes started happenin and didn't stop comin'. What this entry made me realize is how undercooked Borderlands games are at release. Borderlands 3 had notorious inventory bugs, and this arbitrary level cap that is just gonna be removed through DLC is just ridiculous. I'm sad to say, since I used to love Borderlands, that it seems as if these games are only really worth all the hooplah once they release in a complete state, otherwise you're going to have to sit through limited gameplay and glaringly obvious bugs that should've been patched before release. If I ever decide to upgrade into the future generations of game consoles, I'll go back to waiting for GOTY editions. But even then, those editions continue getting gimped more and more as time goes on....
8.5
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