The new Boredlands game is based on the worst DLC to the second game with one of the worst characters and some of the worst writing in history. The badness of the story is in the ballpark of Bridge to Terabithia and then you have Tina and Ashly Burch on top of that.
Tina is in the top of the worst characters ever created. A combination of insufferably bad writing with insufferably bad voice acting and this is her personal game.
The story of this game is made up and is happening inside the game inside the game so it doesn’t matter on top of nothing in boredlands ever mattering. Everyone is taking a piss on every level possible. Yet somehow you are expected to take this pompous self-serious multi-meta trash seriously and be sad or something. And it’s so impactful i already forgot it.
There are garbage characters, with garbage designs, and garbage writing.
The writers are just a collective of extremely rich people talking alien language to each other, and laughing at you having no food and dying from the lack of medcare at 30, while living during a war.
The only good lines in this game is the main character set that i’ve luckily picked and the lich-head summon. (But of course it turned out it’s Egoraptor, again).
Having a custom character doesn’t mean infinite possibilities, it means everyone will play one of the same three types.
- Gruff white dudes.
- Sexy catgirl elves
- ololo clowns
So traditionally mine is 2+3. A dark-skinned blonde catgirl with lowest possible voice. And it was a really good choice.
The character creation tools are not the most detailed. Can’t compete even with Mass Effect. But at least it isn’t bethesda-ugly, doesn’t lock your options and there is an overdrive checkbox. With it i managed to have a really, really, truly very deep voice. And overdriving height and downsizing the head i managed to have a tall character with more realistic human proportions, instead of a typical borderlands chibi.
There are several classes representing a skill-tab each, and offering two ults. After several levels you can pick up a secondary class, adding another skill tab to your character. So you have a choice of four ults. You can always respec and that allows you to try every available class as your secondary, you can’t change your main tho.
This is not Hexen, and isn’t even Heretic. You have a significantly reduced pool of all the same guns and a fantasied variation of each. Pistols, automatic rifles, and snipers have crossbow parts grafted on them. Bigger damage, strong bullet drop. Shotguns and SMGs shoot “magic”. Heavy weapons offer boring, boring and you don’t even have a third boring. The base game’s heavy weapons are the best in the series and surpass many other games.
There’s a melee slot modifying your melee attack. The variety is solid, but why would you bring a knife to a gunfight? The best choices are the pickaxe generating a little of cash and the sword that shoots projectiles, allowing you to open multiple containers at the same time from some distance away. It does work on collectibles too.
Grenades are replaced with spells, which work on a cooldown instead of using dedicated ammo. The rest are two ring slots, amulet slot and a slot for dual-class-mod.
The core gameplay loop is entirely the same — visit maps, do quests, target the weak spot of a giant enemy crab for massive damage.
The level-cap of 40 means all the guns outside of extremely lucky outlier rolls underperform. Having a gun with solid damage is extremely rare.
Your survivability is culled. The guardian rank does not unlock any cool new skills, but increases some minor stats. Which basically means you are just nerfed until you max them all out. There are also four uncapped stats to spend the points on after the rest is maxed out.
There’s overworld and it is another weird play-area. You run around in 3rd person, unlock shortcuts, punch containers with cash, collect collectibles do side-quests. There are also random micromaps you can visit to shoot some enemies a bit for pathetic rewards, and random encounters offering the same experience, but you can just punch them in the face to not waste your time.
One of collectibles are “lucky dice” which supposedly permanently increase you luck. After getting them all i didn’t notice any improvement.
After you finish the main storyyou can waste your time in randomized rogue-lite mode. Finishing harder and harder runs you can increase the chaos level. It’s about the same as the mayhem in BL3, but bad. Very bad. Mayhem has a clear loot progression. You play on lover level to get stronger guns with bigger damage, which are viable on higher levels to get even stronger guns. Here, increasing your chaos level significantly buffs the enemies, while offering only a miniscule chance to get a stronger gun with unclear benefits. You have a 2,5% chance to see an ascended label on random quality loot if you play at chaos mode 50, where the damage sponge enemies have 1500% HP and deal 200% damage. How about no.
The challenges are kinda toned down and are kinda even more useless with their small cash rewards. A lot of challenges demand too much grinding for so little content. It asks for BL2-3 number in a rather short game. One of the challenges which has a corresponding achievement asks of you to farm cash to unlock all the inventory / ammo pool upgrades. And it is purely insane. The prices are reaching multiple millions, while the game is level-capped at 40, with your cash drops in 500-1000 cash at best, and loot selling prices usually a bit more than 5000 for purples. Even using the money-making pickaxe you would have to spend days on pure grinding. For the first time in history of me playing BL (that’s what she said) i just downloaded a save from steam guides to get the last missing achievement.
The season pass adds some colours and skins for customization.
All the DLCs are just additional options for a separate roguelite mode with new separate currency to spend on randomized legendaries. Three of them are repetitive string of unrelated mini maps where you do a menial task to open a portal to the next one. Until you go and fight a boring boss battle. You also have an optional menial task to optionally get some garbage drops. The best part in it being roguelite is a variety of instant death options, like touching one pixel of lava clipping through the floor. The game asks of you to finish each at least four times.
There are terrible photographs of people talking instead of any story for this section of the game. And each of the difficulties have a slightly changes text. All of the writing is boring nonsense that instantly leaves your head. And there are no transcripts or explanation of the borderwiki. No one cares at all.
Molten Mirrors / Puns and Crimeishment features a small hub world from which you go to four smaller maps. The entry to Crystal Chasm is very not obvious and the way to unlock it is hidden.
These DLCs are actively boring and then they add their bosses to the main roguelite mode. And i saw people complain that these bosses are hard and actually ruining their game.
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Borderlands 3 had the worst story and writing in the series. The series that has bestowed upon us “crappucino”. But now that crown is taken by the Wonderlands. Good thing that Boredlands 3 also has the best gunplay in the series, and it’s even superior to most of the modern spukgurgleweewee games. And this being a spin-off of 3 means that actually playing the game is way better than liseeening it excrete its terrible writing into your skull.
