Looking back on Borderlands 3

Hello pals,

I've just got a new computer recently, and I'm interested in downloading some games again. One of those was Borderlands 3.

I was looking back at the old thread I made, and wondering if I was right.

How do you guys think about BL3, a few years later on? Did it really falter where the first 2 games kicked so much arse? Or was it an underrated gem?

It's a slog. It goes on way too long and the worst, most tedious levels are at the end. I don't remember anything redeeming about it.

Borderlands 3 isn't that bad at all. It's not much different than the first and second games. Only instead of hunting a sociopath, wise cracking, guy with delusions of grandeur named Handsome Jack, you are fighting against a couple of psycho young adult twin siblings, who represent the worse side of social media's Influencers. Many of the DLC story missions that were later added are also good, like destroying Handsome Jack's casino to name one of them.

But again, like the Far Cry games, your like or dislike will largely depend on the personality of the villains, as the gameplay itself is more of the same.

When it comes to story, Borderlands 3 is a product of its time in the same way that Borderlands 2 was. The humor is different thematically, but it is still extremely "online." My favorite parts were some of the more serious revelations about returning characters. Borderlands 3 is the fourth game in the series; if you enjoyed the different classes and wild and crazy gun randomization from the previous games, there's plenty more of that. Play it with friends and turn the dialogue down.

I often describe the Borderlands games as "some of my favorite games that I have to meet waaaaaaay more than halfway" and yeah, BL3 fits the bill. It's got the good action and wacky builds, buuuuut...

- the writing fails to deliver on a promising premise

- there's way too much time spent turning in quests or waiting for Lilith to finish talking already

- it desperately needs 2 features from Reaper of Souls: an armory for quickly switching between loadouts and an "adventure mode" that allows me to play through alts in a way that isn't just going through the story again (and then again and again for each new difficulty level). Whatever problems the game's writing may have, they would be much easier to forgive if I didn't have to deal with them twelve times.

I remember liking the game part of it. I also remember turning off most of the audio so I could listen to podcasts since I was getting annoyed by the game's writing.

Imo a terrible game. The BL in general haven't aged well. While the shooting feels good, the pacing, dialogue, level design all just so boring. I just can't see a reason to play it over the many similar options out there.

Borderlands had its time. It defined and pioneered the modern loot-based shooter, but the genre has largely passed it by which is why going back to this game or even Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, which came out last year, is such a tough prospect. It speaks volumes on how little interest there is in properly reviving this series as it started, and not the adventure games, and this still stands as the last proper numbered Borderlands game.

The writing on the villains in BL3 was so bad that I almost quit multiple times. They're super annoying and are constantly chatting at you and that made it pretty tough to look forward to playing it!

Never forget that time that Ryan Davis absolutely fucking bodied the writer of Borderlands 2.

it wasn't great, but i knew what i was in for (more borderlands), got it for cheap, and played with a bud and i had a decent enough time.

truthfully i derived about as much enjoyment from it as i did from Diablo 4. i like the style of both, and it's fun to upgrade your character (for a time)- but eventually the grind catches up with me and i bail.

but for cheap and co-op? why not.

Borderlands is deeply stupid, video game junk food. I don't look back on any of them and think hard about their value but I'm not gonna say I had a bad time playing them in the moment.

The shooting is good, the guns feel better than in the previous two games, but everything else is such a let down. The villains are horrible, the plot is horrible, the jokes make Borderlands 2 look brilliant in comparison, and it shits on its own legacy at every possible turn, the most egregious being what they did to the characters from Tales from the Borderlands. It feels like, in every way, Gearbox was laughing at the people who liked their games, and everything they've done since has convinced me that assessment is pretty damn accurate.

I rememebr the systems feeling ancient and they made almost zero QOL improvements over the second game. The quest system has alway felt unnrecesarily clunky and it has not improved.

The guns which were a novelty in the previous two games, are now just kind of samey. None of them feel all that unique. The billions of guns thing was a huge part of their push for 3 as always, but they managed to make most guns just kind of lame.

These two things combined with the God awful writing (who the fuck was that even for) make 3 easily the worst of the series for me. It bored the arse off me and made me actively hate it. It's a bad game.

I'll add this too - the post-game content is a bizarre mess. I'm sure there are probably rocket scientists and engineers who know what the hell is going on but that was so poorly designed and inaccessible as to completely put me off replaying it.

This is my take as well. Especially what was done to the Tales of the Borderlands characters. Its like if Rob Schneider wrote a sequel to a Cohen Brother's movie.

I'm getting older and having less free time to invest in lesser quality games plays a role but I will say:

-I finished all of Borderlands 1.

-I finished most of Borderlands 2.

-I can barely remember playing Borderlands 3 and I for sure made it to the second or third planet. I vaguely remember unlocking the space ship, seeing Lilith again and a quest with Tiny Tina, being soul crushed at the characterization of the Tales characters, who are among your earliest NPCs and the rest is just a fog.

*EDIT* TO BE CLEAR - I dont in anyway think ANY of the Borderlands are Cohen Brother's movies XD

It's not incredibly fun to play solo so I'd recommend playing with someone else. You could say that about all the BL games though. The shooting is solid, the guns are fun and the DLC is a bit better than main game imo. You can always turn the dialogue down as everyone just keeps talking and never shuts up. They recorded a lot of dialogue for this game lol.

Too much sizzle, not enough steak. It's not doing anything new, better, or more interesting than the prior entries other than being way too long for what it is. They easily could have cut an act or two and it wouldn't have greatly affected things.

Also, the writing sucks. It's hard to understate that point. It really, really sucks. The best way I can describe it is that it's the video game equivalent of the nu-G4 TV. The kind of thing that's so terrible its badness echoes back in time and makes the original product it was based on retroactively bad.