Tiny Tina Wonderland's : A Review

 

A year later, I finally came around to playing this game. About 30 hours in the game to beat the main campaign, a few side quests and the DLC, I've got to say, it was a blast. 

For those that don't want to read the whole thing, I give this game an 8/10. 

A game with solid gameplay, settings, and character building. Its story can be a hit or miss, personally I thought it was good, but could've been better and was held back by some issues. Otherwise, a good Borderlands games, that improved on the flaws from Borderlands 3, but make new ones this time around. 

If you're looking for a fantasy-based first-person shooter, with the freedom to use different types of guns and spells, this is the game for you. The gameplay loop is just truly satisfying. 

You get the option to pick between 6 Fantasy-Based trope classes and later get to add another class to mix and match. This opens up a role playing aspect unlike in previous Borderlands games, where you would get to pick between Vault Hunters present in the game.

All the locales, biomes and the level design is done well, and it is fun to traverse through all the levels. The presentation and artistic vision put into them is conveyed to the player well as you move through them. For sure, there is a plethora of biomes available, from your classic castles with large battlefields around them, snowy mountains, pirate coves, dwarven mines to the whole ocean floor or a beanstalk being a level. I do appreciate the creative level design they were able to achieve in the game. 

The things I mentioned before are all the positives in the game. I'll be honest, after Borderlands 3, I have gotten pretty tired with Borderlands style writing, the comedy just doesn't hit anymore, and the lack of actual dramatic serious moments hurt the storyline and the involvement of the player in the story. Also, sometimes, the amount of talking done by characters is just grating. Thankfully, the gameplay existed to drone out the endless exposition. I wouldn't mind it if it was interesting, but boy was it just mundane. 

Like I said, the campaign was good, but there were moments where it just went over me. The two main reason were audio and subtitles, both of which were atrociously bad. The audio in game was 2 to 3 time less than normal, so you could barely hear what anyone was saying as explosions, gunshots and bullets are whizzing past you.

The subtitles, oh man, were so annoying. It just makes it so hard to understand anything. So, what they do is drop paragraphs and blocks of text onto the screen and expect the player to follow what is being said, which is also very hard to do because the audio is so low. I understand they were trying to go for a role playing game trope. These big blocks of text not only affected a player trying to follow the story, but took up screen space while in the heat of battle. I don't know why they thought this was ok, they could've just split them up line by line.

As much as I like large explosions, bright colors to denote the type of damage done, and cool spells go off, as I was playing as a Spellshot, a mage class, throwing out spells just creates a visual mess during intense combat. It gets to the point where I would just throw out spells and hope to see dead enemies because the effects tend to be so intense. 

I was not a big fan of tying RNG and loot chance behind a collectible based system. Basically, you had to scour all the levels in the game for a D20 die, and the more you collect, the higher your chances of getting better loot. Sometimes it is just tedious and hampers with my enjoyment of collecting legendary gear. The endgame felt very lacking, it introduced a rougelike style arena based combat encounters. The DLC was pretty short and easy.

I played the game on the hardest difficulty and to be honest it wasn't very difficult as I was using guns up to 10 levels under leveled and still had a decent time killing enemies. I could've used new guns, yes, but I was just testing to see the point of damage fall off and couldn't really find it. 

 

I was able to look past most of these issues as the gameplay was just so good and enjoyable and such a refreshing take on the Borderlands formula. So if you want the Fantasy Based - Borderlands game, or more of the Tiny Tina DLC from Borderlands 2 (which is a masterpiece btw, I highly recommend you check out Borderlands 2), this is the game for you.

Now to rate this game, I will split it into 4 categories, Story, Visual Design, Level Design and Gameplay. It would be rated out of 5.

Story: 3/5 

A bit more intense, emotional moments would have helped a lot, and while funny, it's genuinely very rare. Talking about side quests, the spectrum was from very boring to mildly interesting. But I will give it up to most of the voice actors for doing a very good job.

Visual Design: 4/5

I thoroughly enjoyed the creatively designed guns, armor and spells in the game and its visuals translated well to its mechanics. The world design, like I've mentioned before, was very good. The details were put into every nook and cranny, and the Borderlands' art style really lends well to this setting to allow the artists to be as creative as possible. 

Level Design: 4/5

It was very fun to traverse through the levels, with good verticality, puzzles, and platforming which when tied together with the gameplay worked in harmony. 

Gameplay: 5/5

 This is the best component of the game, and in this game, they have perfected how the guns feel and sound, how abilities and spells feel to cast and use, the skill trees giving you enough freedom to try different things and ways to play and the gear system which had expanded components to make character building more fun.

 

So overall, the game is a 4/5, a good game with its flaws, and if you can look past them, you can have an enjoyable time.

~sodahead