'Borderlands 3' Review (PC): The Once And Future King

Seven years is a long time to wait for a sequel in this age of five Assassin Creeds and ten Call of Duties in a single decade. Gearbox took a detour on the way here, a venture into MOBA-land with Battleborn, but ultimately, course-corrected and have managed to get Borderlands 3 here at last. For many fans, it’s been such a long wait the game has become even more mythical than Half-Life 3, but it’s actually even more significant because, you know, it exists.

I am an admitted Borderlands superfan, having devoted frankly absurd amounts of time to multiple playthoughs and multiple characters in the first two games, though I will admit I skipped the Pre-Sequel (and I’ve been told I should have no real regrets about that). But with great potential love comes great potential disappointment, and I’d built up the fabled Borderlands 3 in my mind so much over the years that it seemed impossible for expectation to match reality.

Now that I’m dozens of hours into it, I’d say it mostly has lived up to my vision of it, though how Borderlands 3 fits into the wider gaming landscape, particularly the loot shooter genre it spawned almost a decade ago, will be somewhat complicated.

What is perhaps the most surprising thing about Borderlands 3 is how little things have really changed since Borderlands 2, at least in terms of the larger picture and structure of the game. Most, including me, will generally view this is a good thing, considering how beloved the past games are, and how exhausting “games as service” has become in many ways. There are no shared social spaces, no always-online instanced worlds. It’s just…a lot more Borderlands, with improvements bolted on whenever possible.

Borderlands 3 follows four new Vault Hunters as they work for Lilith, now commander of the Crimson Raiders, who is fighting against a cult led by siblings Tyreen and Troy, both Sirens with…interesting powers. They’ve figured out that the two of them can control the roaming bandits of Pandora by absorbing them into a cult called the Children of the Vault. They, and we, are on a quest to find the various vaults that were shown on other planets at the end of Borderlands 2 to unlock their ultimate power.

This is where Borderlands 3 feels pretty identical to the last two. It’s the same structure. Yes, you’re going to different planets for the first time instead of the ice/jungle/deserts of Pandora, but it’s all the same concept, albeit a bit larger in scale. Meet old and new wacky NPCs. Do goofy/harrowing missions for them. Find secrets. Get loot. Be goaded over the radio by the main antagonist. Players will be delighted by most of the characters that return to the series, though there are a few notable names missing that perhaps may show up in DLC or the like. I actually liked most of the new characters introduced as well, including Lorelei, a freedom fighter working with Rhys form Tales of the Borderlands, or Wainwright Jakobs, the heir to the Jakobs firearms brand, who also happens to be dating our old friend Sir Hammerlock.

If you appreciated Borderlands’ humor before (or didn't), nothing has really changed. It’s not really as over-the-top as I imagined it would be, though for a script full of jokes, there aren’t a ton of outright laughs. There are a few memorable missions that were darkly funny with turns I won’t spoil here, but I actually think Borderlands works best when it amps up the drama rather than being 24/7 gags. And Borderlands 3 only does that on rare occasions.

I’d say the best and really only major storytelling change from the past games I noticed is that you, the player Vault Hunter, actually talks a lot more. Gearbox has done something clever where in many missions, even smaller side missions, you actually have a fair bit of lines in them. The NPC will answer the same way in every playthrough, but your reply lines are crafted to show a bit of that character’s specific flavor. As such, you feel less like a passive participant just yelling things in battle, and more a part of the story. If this has been used before, I’ve forgotten, but it happens in almost every mission the game has in BL3. I’d say my two favorite voice actors were for Zane and Amara. Zane in particular felt like a real part of the universe by the end, though in many instances, you totally disappear from cutscenes your character should be in while events happen to your NPC friends, which is a bit weird.

But now we arrive at where Borderlands 3 is different, and better, than its predecessors. Gameplay.

Borderlands always had its unique visuals, fun tone and good loot down, but the actual shooting mechanics were very average, and that’s especially noticeable if you go back and try to play it now. When I spoke to Gearbox about the game at a preview event, they told me that they’d been studying Destiny not for its “ongoing world” components, but for its top-notch gunplay. And while Borderlands 3 may not be the best in the genre, it’s dramatically improved both on PC and with a controller.

Movement is totally transformed through the addition of just a few simple mechanics like sliding and clamber (which still sucks for jumping puzzles, but it’s progress). Shooting just feels…better. All the guns feel fantastic to use, and the epics and legendaries especially are a blast, tearing enemies apart with unique perks. It does feel like it’s channeling a lot of what makes Destiny’s gunplay feel similarly good, but for non-devs it can be hard to put precisely into words. It just…flows.

I have sunk a lot of time into Borderlands 3 for this review and other pieces I’ll be writing. I’ve done a complete playthrough with Zane, currently at level 43 (out of 50) and he’s now in True Vault Hunter mode, aka New Game Plus. It took maybe 25-27 hours to get through the campaign doing 99% of available side missions. But since this is Borderlands, that’s a campaign you’ll be running many, many times if you plan on doing higher difficulties or other characters.

I got to around level 20-25 with Amara the Siren, Moze the Gunner and fan-favorite FL4K the Beastmaster. Zane was my main and the only character who can juggle two simultaneous action skills. I chose him because I thought he’d be a good solo player with his holographic clone and follow drone. I ended up using the clone but not the drone, and his shield skill. The clone is wild because as its final perk it spawns with a copy of whatever weapon you’re using which can mean serious damage. The shield tree is good because of a perk that can freeze enemies solid on multiple critical hits, something I employed against countless Badass enemies and a few minibosses. It’s amazing.

Then I moved to FL4K, who like all these characters, really doesn’t start to get rolling until levels 15-20 when you have some points into skills. I actually respeced them because I didn’t like the pet monkey with a gun because he frankly, was very inaccurate and wasn’t doing much for me in combat. I switched to the Skag who cannot miss with his melee attacks, and by level 20, the thing is starting to turn into a bandit-eating monster whom I love dearly. FL4K’s pets also do fun, random things like the monkey will pick up environment barrels and throw them at enemies, while the Scag will cough up ammo or find chests, which are unlisted perks off the tree. Kinda neat.

Moze is probably the best gun-based class of all, with trees devoted to serious ammo, fire rate and damage bonuses, and her mech is like a super version of the turrets from the other soldiers in past games, and probably pound for pound, the best action skill in the game in terms of pure damage/kill potential, which is why it has such a long cooldown. It just absolutely shreds no matter what attachments you put on its arms. She also has another tree that is almost entirely based on grenades and rocket launchers which I want to try down the road.

Finally, I am currently playing with Amara, which I am trying to make a melee master. She’s a pretty beastly tank with amazing regen abilities and buffs to close range bullet firing and her melee move. Her action skills have very short cooldowns but won’t kill more than a target or two at a time. I like her because her playstyle is so drastically different than the other three, though building a melee-based solo bruiser is proving to make some of the tougher boss fights challenging, and I worry about taking her all the way to endgame. But she’s becoming wicked strong, especially now that I just found a shield that gives me 180% bonus melee damage when depleted. The game is full of gamechanging drops like this.

The loot, so far, is great. I have gotten a smattering of legendaries in my initial playthroughs here, many of them with wild perks like a lightning sniper that shoots arc traps, or a radiation damage AR that is allegedly hurling mini binary stars at people. I personally love Jakobs weapons as they lack elements, but are massively hard-hitting and crit shots ricochet to other targets. My least favorite guns are from Tediore, as I don’t find the “throw them and they blow up/turn into turrets” mechanics very useful or compelling. I’m also not a huge fan of Maliwan’s charge up speed, but conversely I love Vladof’s high rate of fire and huge magazines. But in the end, almost all of the guns are fun to use, as are all the action skills, which feel more compelling than the one “ultimate” every character had previously. Now it’s really only Moze that has a skill like that, and her mech is more interesting and fun than any turret.

Difficulty varies, and varies wildly once you reach the endgame. I did all my playthroughs on normal, and while it wasn’t a cakewalk, it wasn’t super tough either. Few bosses put up that much of fight after two or three attempts, but entering the endgame is a different matter entirely.

This is where Borderlands has had to evolve a bit in order to keep pace with rivals. It starts with something it already had, True Vault Hunter mode, which acts like New Game Plus where it offers better loot and tougher enemies, allowing you to keep your level and current gear when starting over. That’s fine, but I will say I’m not wild about the prospect of running this full campaign start to finish eight times, as that’s always been my least favorite aspect of Borderlands. And this is complete with unskippable cutscenes for good measure.

But past True Vault Hunter mode, an interesting twist on the endgame is Mayhem Mode, which works a bit like Diablo 3’s Torment levels, though there are only three of them. They come with big boosts to enemy health (which can feel a bit bullet spongy if you’re not geared up enough), but in turn, cash and loot drops as well. And they have modifiers that change in each zone you go into. One could be turning down fire and cold damage while turning up corrosive and radiation. One could be buffing melee damage but allowing enemies to fire extra projectiles when shooting. There are loads of these combinations, and I haven’t seen nearly all of them yet. I am not geared up enough to do True Vault Hunter and Mayhem at the same time, which you can do, but even doing Mayhem in the normal playthrough, the drop rate quality increases are substantial. Mayhem 2 has 500% better loot. Mayhem 3  has 900% better. And you can feel it.

That’s especially good news because Mayhem drops gear that is “Anointed.” It’s not a new rarity tier, but it takes rare, epic and (I think) legendary gear and gives it a bonus, special action skill-based perk. Some may be for any character (an action skill finishing regens 5% health for a few seconds) or for a specific class (shooting through Zane’s shield barrier with this gun takes it from a 5% elemental chance to a 55% elemental chance). It’s clear there are going to be some massively powerful perks to hunt in there, and combine that with legendary drops? Man…

Finally, there are the actual activities where all of this can be combined. Slaughterhouse is a wave-based mode that players will remember from past games that I find very irritating to try to solo due to the cramped quarters. I am more interested in Proving Grounds, a series of stages that function more like Diablo 3’s rifts, where you kill enemies while on a timer and fight a boss at the end, with bonuses given for speed clears and not dying. My first run, I hit every bonus objective and got a legendary and three good epics at my level in the final chest. I imagine the ultimate endgame of BL3 is going to be running Proving Grounds on True Vault Hunter on Mayhem 3 for just an absolutely absurd amount of loot. And I am very far away from being able to do that, even after 60-70 hours.

Borderlands 3 does not feel like a total transformation for the series, just an evolution. And that may leave some part of it stuck in the past, but overwhelmingly, it’s a game that’s still a blast to play, particularly for those into the loot shooter genre. It’s easy to see that with Anthem on life support and The Division 2 in limbo, that the next few years may be a Destiny V. Borderlands horse race. The differences between the two may be large in many ways, and yet yes, they definitely are competitors, as there are only so many hours in the day and both demand a large amount of time if you want to farm their respective endgames. It’s going to be a genuinely tough decision which of these to devote my time to if both keep being as engaging as they’ve been so far.

But that’s what we call a “good problem.” Borderlands 3 was worth the wait and will be a fixture in this genre for years to come. And I think few fans of the last two will be disappointed when they get their hands on it at last.

Platform: XB1, PS4, PC (PC version reviewed, code provided by Gearbox)

Developer: Gearbox

Publisher: Take Two

Release Date: September 13, 2019

Score: 9 out of 10