SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Despite technical issues and a muddled narrative, Borderlands 3 succeeds at delivering a refined and supersized loot-and-shoot experience.
In many ways, Borderlands 3 is a paradox: both eager to change and yet stubbornly rejecting many opportunities to do so. As a game, it ensures that this loot-and-shoot franchise remains the king of its genre even seven years later. Numerous copycats have risen and fallen just as quickly, and yet Borderlands remains. This latest entry is as irreverent and fun as the franchise has ever been, but at the same time, we’ve reached the end of the road. Its stubborn refusal to diverge from what made its predecessors so popular is both a benefit and a warning shot to the foot. Refining and super-sizing makes for an excellent game, but Borderlands 3 makes it clear that this franchise will soon need to choose between evolving and fading away.
Five years after the death of Handsome Jack, the planet of Pandora remains in a state of chaos. Following the downfall of Hyperion, the planet’s warring bandits have grouped together under the banner of the Children of the Vault, a cult led by the twins Troy and Tyreen Calypso. The Calypso Twins and their followers are rampaging across the galaxy in search of a Great Vault, which contains all the power they need to become the most powerful beings in the universe. The only things standing in their way are the Crimson Raiders, led by the powerful Siren Lilith, and a band of unruly Vault Hunters looking to crack open the Great Vault and steal its loot for themselves.
Borderlands 3 makes a promise: to let you loot and shoot your way across the galaxy on a wild adventure. This is easily the biggest the franchise has ever been, and the choice to supersize itself is crucial to this game’s success. However, Gearbox have struggled to build a story to match this new expanded universe. This game’s narrative is disappointingly small-scale and compares poorly to the extraordinary highs and lows of Tales from the Borderlands. Certain plot threads from previous entries have been left dangling without resolution, and major characters have either been forgotten, or perhaps even deliberately left out without so much as a cameo. Even those characters who do return get little more than a single moment in the spotlight before fading into the background, although there are exceptions. As an attempt to bring everything and everyone together for a massive galaxy-wide adventure to save the universe, Borderlands 3 is only a partial success.
It’s not all bad however. The game introduces entertaining new characters who succeed at infusing this game with some extra energy, and it succeeds at resolving a few leftover plot threads. Although they aren’t on the same level as Handsome Jack, the Calypso Twins are still delightfully evil. Voice actors Elisa Melendez and Max Mittelman put in the extra effort to make doubly sure that the player loves to hate them. They’re particularly delightful to anyone who’s developed a dislike for streaming or YouTube culture. They are, after all, the evil Twitch streamers of the future. Balex, an AI voiced by none other than Ice-T, also effortlessly steals every scene he’s in. On top of that, the player still does get the promised interstellar road trip, journeying from planet to planet in search of Vaults to open and encountering a few familiar faces. It’s entirely serviceable, if not extraordinary.
You start off on Pandora as always, but it’s only a few hours before you pack up and head for distant shores. The new environments are impressively detailed, whether it’s the neon-lit streets of Promethea, headquarters of the all-powerful Atlas Corporation, the mountainside monasteries (and attached brewery) of Athenas, or the humid swamps of Eden-6. The change of scenery adds welcome freshness to the game and keeps things from getting stale. Each planet has side quests specially styled for them; on Promethea, you might wind up gathering ingredients for a pretentious barista robot, while on Eden-6 you’ll battle a swamp witch at the request of a friendly local who claims she’s betrayed The Pact. Like with previous games, side quests are a major source of the game’s irreverent humour, weapons-grade memes (including jabs at everything from Tommy Wiseau to Skyrim), and potty jokes.
In terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, this is the best the franchise has ever been. Guns now feel substantially different from one another, even within the same weapon classes. Legendary weapons have properly unique effects; I picked up a fire-spitting assault rifle that ricocheted shots and refunded two bullets for every critical hit I scored, allowing my character to dish out damage for minutes on end without having to reload. Each manufacturer also has their own perk: Atlas guns fire tracking darts and homing bullets, while Maliwan guns can now switch between two elemental damage types, and Dahl guns allow you to switch between different firing modes. All this serves to heavily reinforce the already solid gunplay.
As before, players get to pick between four different Vault Hunters: FL4K, Amara, Moze and Zane. The skill trees of each character have been expanded, allowing the player to customise their character to more closely fit their preferred playstyle when compared to previous games; rather than just having the one Siren power, Amara now has three to choose from for example. I chose Moze, whose special skill involves her piloting a customisable Iron Bear mech. Running around the battlefield spraying bandits with plumes of fire from a flamethrower while peppering them with bullets from a minigun at the same time was both exhilarating and cathartic. As Amara, I could leap into the air and pound the ground with a massive energy fist, sending enemies flying. I’ve never gotten this much sheer satisfaction from a Borderlands game before. This was only slightly undercut by fatigue; the game’s bosses are mostly tiresome bullet sponges that have to be whittled down with several tons of bullets rather than tactics or strategy.
A lot of small quality-of-life changes and effects, more than can be mentioned, come together to improve the game. There’s remarkable attention to detail in places: firing a shotgun at an enemy now flings them backwards for example. The option to mantle up onto objects makes traversal more fluid, while the redesigned UI makes the game look a lot cleaner and makes information easier to parse. The game also gives you an easy-to-read 3D map and the ability to swap between different quests without having to dive into menus which, as a fan of RPG games, I was thankful for. This game also has level scaling down to a science. Wherever you go, it’s hard to feel either underpowered or overpowered. Fighting enemies is always a challenge, punctuated by those over-the-top moments where your special skills let you wreak havoc.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always translate to a smoother experience. With Borderlands 3, you’re given the option to choose between resolution and performance modes. In resolution mode, the game looks remarkably crisp but runs poorly. Severe framerate drops are common and even something as simple as opening the menu causes the game to stutter. While it’s never unplayable, it is noticeable and has a definite negative effect on the experience as a whole. Switching to performance mode on the other hand drastically improves the framerate but comes at the cost of a severe visual downgrade.
Borderlands 3 represents the franchise at its best and at its worst. Hours and hours of excellent gunplay and irreverent humour go together well, as they always have, and the hundred or so little quality of life changes raise the bar once again. However, it’s hard to ignore the technical issues and the muddled narrative, which never really raises itself above the bar that’s already been set, or fully delivers on the potential of its premise. Make no mistake, it’s still very much a ride worth catching, even if it shows how badly the franchise needs to evolve in future.
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