Borderlands 3

I seem to have started my previous Borderlands posts with how I got each game in question. So I guess to continue with the tradition: Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition had quite the discount back in 2022 on Steam. It was a pricing error, in fact, and lasted a whole day before it was fixed. And to this day, the complete version doesn't seem to have been as cheap on any official store. That is always nice to note when you finally get to a game on your backlog: you didn't "pay extra" just for it to wait there.

Previously when starting a Borderlands game, I had only played through each entry once (or not at all in the case of the first one). But now, while still well below the hours true veterans have put into them, I was far more experienced. As a part of my effort to raise my average completion rate on Steam, I had revisited the previous Borderlands entries to 100% them. 

The Pre-Sequel I continued (re)playing even after unlocking everything because it was simply fun and also had the best gameplay in the series -- at the time, anyway: that spot has now been taken by Borderlands 3. Unfortunately, writing-wise this latest entry is from the other end: a new low for the series.

Not your best story, Marcus

There is a whole score of things wrong with the writing of Borderlands 3. For starters, its main antagonists, the Calypso twins Tyreen and Troy, are dull. The whole influencer cult seems to be the only thing they have going for them. The twins' reasonings and motivations are lacking and don't seem plausible nor convincing even if you make sure to find all audiologs related to them. There seemed to be a feeble attempt for a growing unease between the twins but it doesn't go anywhere. That story element gets simply waved away. The game's finale then crowned the whole lackluster villain arc by being nonsensical -- amazingly easy difficulty-wise as well.

Characters have died in the series before but the terrible writing and cutscenes make it worse in Borderlands 3. Almost no one takes proper caution before things have gone pear-shaped. Nor does anyone react properly when having brought a knife to a gun fight turns out to have been a bad idea. No one gets reprimanded for being an idiot.

Your character gets ignored in the cutscenes too. And because this entry is all about the Sirens -- like the second game -- being ignored is even worse when you're playing as Amara who's the Siren of the four new vault hunters. Like in Borderlands 2 when playing as Maya, you're there like "Hello? I'm a Siren too."

The game's narrative has a couple of twists to throw at you. I found it silly how it drops an unsubtle hint about each one and then not too long after the revelation itself as if no one had gotten it previously. Well, I suppose the game characters hadn't. How the twists were done felt like a clumsy attempt to make the player feel smart.

I think most of the returning characters are fine. Moxxi and Tannis are probably from the better end. Tiny Tina is no longer tiny (the game takes place 7 years after Borderlands 2) and had kind of lost her charm. This game's Pickle is Lorelei who is absolutely grating to listen to.

Tales from the Borderlands is almost a must-play before this because otherwise two characters won't mean anything to you when met and the absence of someone else may seem odd -- at least if you came from Borderlands 2 after having beaten it close to its release way back. That game actually got a new DLC in 2019, Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary, which takes place after Tales and leads up to Borderlands 3. (The DLC was initially free to claim but now costs 15€ if bought separately at full price.)

A lot to play

Borderlands 3 got quite a collection of content updates post-release: three events (that have been future-proofed by being toggleable in the title menu), a battle royal mode (although it doesn't feel much of such when it's just player-versus-environment), few raid boss maps (two of them being quite arduous to play repeatedly due to their length), and finally, four bigger pieces of downloadable content.

The first of the big DLCs, Mad Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot is notable -- not because of how the series can't seem to shake off Handsome Jack but because of its soundtrack. While playing the base game, I had increased music volume relative to other sounds to better hear if there was anything good in there. There were few clearly Jesper Kyd tracks but nothing special -- with the exception of Digby Vermouth - Supernova Dreamsicle which plays when you're clearing the room where you'll fight Katagawa Ball. You don't often hear a jazz combat track in a game.

In the Handsome Jackpot I finally found a lot of great music. The DLC too had multiple composers but I immediately recognized Michael McCann there. I got the impression of as if he had used all the tracks he'd been saving for a new Deus Ex game (may that happen one day): the soundscape in Welcome to the Spendopticon, Spendopticon Assembles, and Spendopticon Full Danger Mode is so similar to the DX prequels' music.

In my Pre-Sequel post I noted that Borderlands 3 would need to be even bigger in scale to justify its existence after the second game. Setting-wise it is that: you are visiting multiple planets and vaults. But in gameplay it doesn't show that much even if there clearly are more things. You initially have to command the Sanctuary III ship to travel to a new location and then use a drop pod to get down, but after that it's fast travel as usual. And maps seemed to be about the same size as previously.

Gameplay perfected

While not massively larger than the previous entries, Borderlands 3 did refine the series' gameplay in a number of ways. You can slide, grab onto ledges (some call it mantling), and there's ground slam like in the Pre-Sequel. Lower gravity maps returned too (sparingly) but vacuum was completely left out -- probably because it was so disliked.

Guns are better than ever; assault rifles are finally useable, even great. Cryo seems to have stabilized its place as the fourth element. Skills trees are four in number for each character and you can customize your action skill on the fly from the variations and augmentations that you have unlocked. Customization is always great but I wish there had been a way to save action skill/weapon loadouts so that switching between optimized mobbing and boss killing ones was easier.

Difficulty seemed a lot more relaxed than previously when playing through the story, although at some point that could have become solely from me having overleveled the content. There were still times when I killed every enemy there was but a damage-over-time effect or an explosion had put me into fight-for-your-life without anything to shoot for a revive. That never becomes less awkward.

There is again a True Vault Hunter Mode (New Game+) but as if predicting no one would want to replay the awful story, Gearbox also included Mayhem Mode whose basic idea is the same as the Torment levels in Diablo III: the higher the mayhem, the harder the enemies and the more rewards you get. Guns generated have higher stats for every Mayhem level and a higher chance (100% on M8+) to have an anointment, an additional effect. Having the mode on scales content to match your level so replaying the story hasn't much of a point.

Wait until max level?

Before playing Borderlands 3, I had done bit of research if there was something that should be skipped until at maximum character level, important items that one would want at their full potential. I was amused that one comment I read said: "Yes, avoid playing the game until you've beaten it." It would be cool if games with randomly generated loot would solve the problem of things being disposable until the endgame.

The consensus for Borderlands 3 however is that there's only one mission-exclusive reward worth using and getting at maximum level. And that is The Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge from the second big campaign DLC, Guns, Love, and Tentacles towards whose end the artifact is handed to you by Claptrap. His reports for you throughout the DLC are awesome: someone for sure had fun writing a Lovecraft-style cosmic horror travelogue.

Another side note about the DLC I want to mention is the voice acting for Gaige (Borderlands 2 vault hunter) whose role in the DLC is a wedding planner. Whenever she reads a greeting that came with a wedding gift, she imitates the character who sent it. Cherami Leigh did such a great job.

Mayhem levels come with various game altering modifiers you can shuffle around somewhat. I'm not a fan of the modifiers because many of them affect gameplay so much, even making builds unplayable. It's thus preferable to turn Mayhem up to 11 as soon as possible. Mayhem 11 is the same as 10 but without extra modifiers and rewards being halved. Some comments say the reward penalty isn't there but for me, normal mobs at least seemed to drop less loot.

Getting a quick start on Mayhem 10 at max level is not that difficult because the game has ways of obtaining items without firing a shot. For instance, you can use your golden keys, which you don't normally really need due to how generous Borderlands 3 is with its loot. (It's much like Diablo 3 in that regard; I loved it.) There are also diamond keys this time. Gearbox hands out codes for them rarely for they grant you many legendaries at once. When you use one on the Sanctuary III, walls full of items open up and you get to pick whole three of them. It's pretty much guaranteed you'll find useful pieces from such plentiful an offering.

One broken thing on Mayhem mode is how vehicle combat balance gets completely out of whack. Your vehicle's guns do pathetic damage and the vehicle is made out of paper against enemy guns. You have to get out to kill anything and while doing so you will likely destroy your vehicle as well from the various area-of-effect skills you have -- the paper goes both ways.

In a surprising turn of events, vehicle controls in Borderlands 3 have an option for regular WASD steering for the first time in the series. It's behind an unhelpful controller option: picking the "left-most" setting enables WASD. The DLCs don't seem to respect the option, though, and you're back to steering with mouse look in them -- which is less surprising. Borderlands has always had user interface issues. This time I also had trouble figuring out how to view all the various gun and skill challenges. Googling the issue told me to back out to the galaxy map view but there was nothing saying how to rotate through the challenge categories. More googling revealed that the button to do so is Q. Some time after I noticed the Q is actually there: it's just hidden behind the first challenge name and comes into view after scrolling the list down. Outside map completion, challenges aren't as important in this title, though. There are no achievements tied to them and they only reward eridium.

I played Borderlands 3 on Medium settings and it ran about as well as Gotham Knights -- another Unreal Engine 4 title. Mostly it was at 60 fps, sometimes less -- definitely better than Redfall. The visuals are largely similar to the previous two entries but definitely of higher definition with the style still being recognizable. I'm not sure if skies were animated previously: they do look pretty in this one, though.

I had some occasional stability issues of the game crashing. It got particularly bad, even inevitable, if I was farming a boss. Something didn't like me repeatedly loading in and out.

Fairly easy to 100%

The games in the series have few co-op achievements, which often tend to be annoyances. In The Pre-Sequel, I managed to unlock them just by myself: I think by running another instance of the game in split screen (or on another PC) and some console command to make the game scale to 4 players in solo for the Who You Gonna Call? achievement. But for the first and second game I had to pester my Steam friends (to revive someone on my friend list) and to even get help from a random Steam user because the first game's viral achievement And They'll Tell Two Friends refused to unlock. I think we figured out why that was but I can't remember the reason anymore.

For Borderlands 3's co-op achievements I didn't have to bother anyone because Epic had given away the base game. There is crossplay between all platforms and launchers, and so I just installed the game on my laptop too to quickly unlock the three achievements that require co-op. Otherwise there is nothing particularly challenging for trophy hunters.

Treat Yo Self is maybe a bit grindy because extracting 50 pieces of gear from Arms Race (the battle royal mode) takes multiple runs and at the start there is some challenge involved. You don't have to win the mode to extract items but you do need to win the mode once for another achievement. Because you drop in naked and there are no class skills, there's nothing to carry you through the race -- you just have to get good at it.

After Borderlands 3, Gearbox proceeded to make Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, sort of a continuation to the awesome Borderlands 2 DLC, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. Wonderlands seems fun to me and I already have it, ready to be played when its turn comes. I think people's opinions on the game have turned lukewarm due to its lacking post-release/DLC support. It apparently doesn't have as much of an endgame to play.