TL;DR – Borderlands 3 is a decent enough FPS “Looter Shooter” with split-screen that has better loot, less annoying writing and some modest visual upgrades & quality of life enhancements over it’s predecessors. Still not incredible but it’s progress!
I’ll make one confession at the start of this review, and that is that I didn’t really enjoy Borderlands 1 or 2 as they were frankly, tedious to play through. The combat was riddled with bullet sponge enemies, the loot-able weapons were often fairly similar to each other (and most of them sucked), picking up every piece of ammo and cash one-by-one was boring but ignoring all that money and ammo made life harder for you. Your abilities were often a bit underwhelming and the “Fight for your Life” feature was hit-or-miss (at least in single-player mode) as it depended on relatively weak enemies charging you while you bled out. They honestly felt like a slog through occasionally pretty but often brown-and-grey areas filled with the same enemies over and over and over while you traipsed from one cluster of glorified corridors to another. The only respite coming in the form of painful dialogue which was yelled at you by various characters who were universally annoying and had an appalling sense of humour. As such I went into Borderlands 3 with a bit of hesitation, but it’s quick descent down to bargain bin prices and the fact that it was one of very few PS4/Xbone games to offer local split-screen made me hold my breath as I prepared to dive into yet another Gearbox branded septic tank.
So you can imagine my surprise when I actually felt that Borderlands 3 was a perfectly playable game, even if the split-screen dream was dashed on impact when I tried it with a friend and we found the FPS to be bad, really bad. Normally I don’t care about this as I played a lot of games on the N64, where excessive amounts of fog and FPS dips to the low-teens were commonplace – but even by those standards Borderlands 3 on the “base” Xbone and PS4 was a disaster. Frequent FPS dips from a mediocre base coupled with big visual downgrades, aggressive amounts of texture pop-in and tiny mission text lead to an honestly bewildering first couple of hours as we struggled to see where the baddies where or what the hell we were meant to be doing. For better or worse my friend conceded that the game was shit and stopped wanting to play after about 5 hours (well, he was semi-coaxed with fun tales of Randy Pitchford’s mishaps and then eventually decided that I could deal with my own dumb purchase) so I played the remaining 30 or so hours by myself.
Ironically enough, Borderlands 3 actually opens around around 5 or 6 hours in so what he experienced was the worst part of the game. Once you’ve gained some levels and thus some perk points, each class starts to get more distinct and similarly, once you’ve gained some levels the potential power-level of the loot drops increase enabling you to actually use weapons that are fun, relatively unique and pack a punch. These weapons and abilities then let you tear through most enemies, especially once you reach the mid-game when you have “Legendary” tier weapons and a solid method of playing that takes advantage of your abilities. For me it was the robot FL4K, who could turn invisible and had a gunslinging monkey companion that was able to distract enemies and revive me when I got riddled with bullets. As for the weapons, I mainly used Jakobs guns (each of the 10 in-game gun brands have different specialities, with Jakobs having less ammo but higher damage per shot for example) as it combined great with my ability to disappear and rack up a bunch of free critical hits as everyone shot at my little monkey friend – but don’t call PETA just yet – as he was a tanky bugger and basically only got hurt during boss fights.
Initially when I was playing with my good friend we were baffled by the decision to have big, open levels that often had relatively little to do in them – but once you reach the mid game this design choice becomes clear. Not only does it give each map enough space to include a range of content – some of which only unlocks later in the story, hence our confusion. It ranges from shooting the baddies to tracking down weapon chests to utilising the upgraded movement mechanics to hunt for glorified audio-logs and parts for Claptrap (the perennially annoying robot companion/mascot who was ALMOST endearing this time). It also lets you hang around a map when you want to grind through respawning enemies, as you can circle through each zone killing everything in your path or redo a boss fight to gain some better weapons. Although it’s worth noting that until you beat the game these areas are still tied to the level of the local boss, so if you really enjoyed a zone it’s a bit one-and-done until the main quest line has been cleared.
Fortunately Borderlands 3 is less grind-heavy then previous games in the series as most main missions are structured so that you should be around the right level once you’ve finished the previous one. As such I only had to stoop down to side-missions a few times, at which point I realised that they actually put effort into them! They had about the same amount of dialogue and action as the normal missions, but were (almost) entirely optional and thus you could do them all at once or just ignore as many as you could get away with. The game therefore does a decent job at pacing itself, even if you spend around 10 hours or so thinking the final boss fight is going to be just around the corner which was my only real gripe with the main story missions.
What made this perpetual teasing from the antagonists irritating wasn’t so much the fact that the game had another neat new area with some new enemies to show-off, nor was it the fact that these new areas felt bare-bones or had only been added to pad the game out. No, each zone actually feels about equivalent and honestly the game having MORE content of the same decent quality than I would have expected is not an issue. The issue is the fact that you fight through an area for an hour or two over a couple missions chasing the antagonists, then the game fades to a cutscene that your character isn’t in so you can watch the side characters get absolutely wrecked as the Antagonists blow you a big raspberry and escape to the next area. It makes sense that everyone else treats your character with respect, as everyone else is unfathomably useless and seem to exist to get bullied relentlessly (or just outright murdered) over the course of the story. Fortunately I didn’t grow too attached as they do absolutely nothing, so watching them get picked off one-by-one like dumb teenagers in a horror movie when the player via Daddy (or Mommy) vault-hunter was absent just felt cathartic more than anything.
The story itself has a surprisingly amount of attention paid to it, with about 30 minutes of cinematics and plenty of dialogue going on. Normally these audio transmissions would be a boring irrelevance, but the game does a decent job of hinting at things in them that end up getting revealed slightly later (including the origin of the antagonists) so more engaged players can find them… dare I say? Engrossing. Plus existing fans of the series will be pleasantly surprised by how many existing characters make a return, with most of the formerly playable characters and a raft of previous side characters appearing. Even characters from Tales From the Borderlands and the Pre-Sequel spin-offs get to take part in the love-in, which was a nice touch that even I was able to appreciate.
Honestly the biggest issue with the game’s main quest line was that because it had so, so many areas and enemies the final couple of bosses ended up being a joke. I practically broke the final boss as it was meant to be in phases, with each phase representing one third of the bosses health bar. This was a good idea in principle, but thanks to my guaranteed critical hits and stupidly powerful rocket launcher I went from phase to phase to phase without ever really being in danger. The final boss basically spent 70% of the fight staggered and on it’s knees, while spending another 20% or so of the fight being invincible as it switched phases.
And I think that honestly sums up Borderlands 3 pretty well in hindsight, as it’s a big flashy adventure wherein the player grows more and more powerful while the enemies struggle to keep up. I wouldn’t call it an RPG, but the sense of progression will be familiar to anyone who has ever played an ARPG like Diablo 2 or Titan Quest. You kill the dudes to maybe get a better item and even if they refuse to drop anything good, at least you got more XP and Gold which you can use for new perk points and the ability to outright buy better equipment from vending machines. Plus the fact that the final boss was a cakewalk only underscored my suspicion that this is a game that is slightly too long for it’s own good, even if the quality never dips once you get past the sluggish start.
Last but not least I’ll briefly touch on a few miscellaneous changes this game has made that makes it better than Borderlands 1 & 2. Firstly and most gratifyingly this game has replaced the hitherto disgusting amount of memes with some cute enemies that function as references to other media. I won’t pretend that I encountered all (or even most of them) but from my own experience I can confirm that you can gun down Penn & Teller, Rick & Morty and the Power Rangers.
It also collects some of the rarer items that you are forced to leave behind on the map once your backpack is full, so there is a bit less pressure to sort through your inventory mid-quest. The UI is still a bit sluggish but tracking new quests is less of a Sisyphean task and if you are so inclined you can now view weapons and items up close and in detail. The home hub ship of Sanctuary is pleasant enough and has multiple vendors and slot machines in a relatively compact space so you spend less time bouncing around from store to store and you don’t have to worry about finding a use for your cash. Perhaps most importantly, you can now vault over chest high barriers and/or onto ledges(!) This new feature is then embraced by a few optional collectibles and strategically placed weapon chests which encourage you to make the most of it. Last but certainly not least, the maps are much more varied than in BL1 and more interesting than they were in BL2, so wandering around each zone has it’s own charm (even if jogging through an area you’ve already been in half a dozen times as the enemies respawn is still a bit boring).
In summary Borderlands 3 is a surprisingly solid upgrade over the previous games in the series and is worth picking up if you just want a relatively mindless FPS game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a ton of content. Basically every aspect of the game from the writing, to the moment to moment combat, to the character abilities and pacing has been improved. It’s such an improvement that if Gearbox ever releases a definitive GOTY edition with all the expansion packs (6 as of time of writing) then I might just pick it up. Considering that Borderlands 1 was one of my most anticipated and then subsequently disappointing gaming experiences, this is high praise indeed. It’s just a shame that the co-op experience is so weak on the base PS4/Xbone, but at least it’s there unlike 99% of triple-A games.