One of the main things people took issue with actually awaited Borderlands 3 was its main narrative, and villains – the Calypso Twins. The majority of the humour didn’t land, weird story decisions were handled poorly, and it was an all-around uninteresting plot that lacked a lot of the charm from the first two games. Gearbox Software seem to have taken that criticism to heart because Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is really a step in the best direction in this regard, bringing by using it a different kind of humor more appropriate to today’s world, well-written characters, and side quests which have no right being as enjoyable as they are.
After crash landing your ship on Pandora, you join Tiny Tina and her group of friends because they attempt a brand new campaign in Bunkers and Badasses, with Tina in the helm as Bunker Master. After creating your Fatemaker, you’re dropped in to the Wonderlands using the task of stopping the Dragon Lord. Its a simple, and easy to follow story that excels not in the premise but in its writing and characters.
It leans heavily into the themes and trappings of DnD, but much like Dragon Keep, the Wonderlands are ever-changing and unpredictable because of Tina’s explosive personality. It offers meta commentary on not only DnD, but video game design in general, with fourth wall breaks and constant prodding at tropes we’ve all come to expect. It’s brought together by another really good performance from Ashley Burch as Tiny Tina, in addition to a solid supporting cast with Andy Samberg as Valentine and Wanda Sykes as Frette.
While lots of Borderlands 3’s jokes ended up falling flat for several players, I discovered myself always entertained by the bickering and backwards and forwards between these characters, along with the occasional one-liner from Tina here and there. There’s a deadpan delivery to numerous the humour here that feels much more suitable compared to the often cringe inducing monologues of the Calypso Twins. A lot of this is also carried over into the side quests you’ll find scattered about the Wonderlands, making each one of these worth investigating to determine what kind of ridiculous situations they confront you with.
The core benefit of Borderlands has always been the progression, loot, and customization, all of which are retained in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, as well as in some instances, improved. Rather than choosing a class based on a preset character, you’ll make your own Fatemaker from scratch with an extensive character creator. Leaning heavily into DnD, you are able to tailor nearly every facet of your character the way you like. From physical traits to choosing an upbringing that affects your base stat spread, there’s a startling amount of control here that enables for a more personal attachment to your character and class.
Speaking of which, there’s an astonishing six classes to select from in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, each with two Action Skills, a passive ability called Class Feats and something skill tree to invest points into. While each one has its own unique playstyle and incentivizes you to employ particular weapons for optimum effect, they’re less fleshed out as previous offerings, however for one reason. In true DnD fashion, Wonderlands eventually opens up the option of multi-classing for you, enabling you slot one more class, giving you use of that class’s respective Feat, Action Skills, and skill tree. Every time you level up, you also gain a point to allocate into your stats, which influence such things as weapon damage, spell cooldown, action skill cooldown and so on, permitting even more flexibility.
It goes without saying that there’s a lot here to experiment and play around with in regards to class synergies and make crafting. My main class was the Spore Warden, sporting a poison-farting mushroom companion as well as an affinity for applying elemental status effects. Combine that with the Clawstrider, which also includes a companion, having a concentrate on dealing lightning and fire elemental damage through various means, and you've got one of many lethal builds you should use in throughout the Wonderlands. The ability to respec all skill and stat points, alongside changing your secondary class means this technique provides the player lots of space and agency in regards to trying new things, that is refreshingly flexible and may alter your gameplay loop a great deal.
The other big new addition in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is available in the type of the overworld, which connects all the areas you’ll explore for actual quests. While you traverse it, you’ll come across random encounters, dungeons, collectibles, side quests, optional areas and more. Each major segment of the board includes a Shrine that can be activated by collecting all the shrine pieces in the area. These may be found in overworld challenges, dungeon encounters, or even backtracking, plus they permanently boost things like loot quality and experience gains once unlocked, which makes them worth the effort.
It’s a great inclusion that contributes more depth and personality towards the Wonderlands, providing an explorable hub world to move throughout as opposed to a standard hub that you teleport to levels from. There’s a great deal here to be found for individuals who love secret hunting, and while dungeons rarely do much to alter up their encounters, the enemy and placement variety is sufficient to keep things feeling relatively fresh.
As expected with anything Borderlands, there’s a metric lot of guns and loot found that enhance your character in all sorts of ways. There’s lots of returning weapon archetypes here that behave how you’d expect, but some of them are more than you would think. There are assault rifles shoots cross-bow like bolts, or submachine guns that fire out homing balls of pulsating energy. It all fits nicely using the overall setting and theme that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands establishes, which extends further towards the Spells and melee weapons.
Funnily enough, grenades aren’t really a thing in the Wonderlands, but Spells most definitely are. Spells are abilities you can slot which are also on the cooldown alongside your Action Skill, but each one of these behaves differently and it has varying fire modes. From Fire and Forget Spells to Hold and Charge Spells, there’s plenty here to choose from plus they drop just like often as guns do. Melee weapons include an extra wrinkle onto combat, enabling you to customize your build even further and placing more focus on a typically mundane and something note action – especially if you’re playing the Stabbomancer class.
Once you reach level 40 and also you begin working the finer information on your class and make, you unlock Mythic Ranking. Much like Badass Ranks in previous games, Mythic Ranks are a long progression system where levelling up nets you tokens you can use to slowly increase your stats towards the highest they may be. The core improvement in Wonderlands, though, is the fact that Mythic Ranks are in the type of constellations, each one of these correlating to particular playstyle. Should you place a point right into a particular tree, you need to move to a tree clockwise to the one you simply invested in for the following point, which makes it feel rigid as compared to the flexibility of others.
Where Borderlands has always allowed players to really flex their build, is incorporated in the end game content. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands main end game comes in the type of Chaos Chamber, a randomly generated tell you encounters that you could make easier or tougher for yourself depending on how handsomely you want to be rewarded. As you clear waves, you can opt to activate modifiers that increase the number of crystals you get while you complete a run, that are eventually used in the final room to chase certain weapon archetypes. The catch is that if you utilize up all of your resides in any given run, you’re booted back to the world and have to start fresh, making it a kind of rogue-lite mode.
It’s an addictive risk versus reward loop that incentivizes you to challenge yourself within the never-ending chase for loot, and it can all be used friends or matchmade with strangers. Enhance the Chaos Levels unlocked upon beating the campaign where you can increase enemy difficulty for more loot similar to Mayhem Levels, and you have plenty of reason to come back to Wonderlands following the credits roll. One weird omission which i couldn’t find was the choice for brand new game plus, commonplace in the past Borderlands games that’s seemingly absent here. I’m not sure if Gearbox wish to pivot to a new type of end game or if it’s being put in at launch, but its definitely disappointing that it’s missing here.
That’s one more thing that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands should be applauded for, the cooperative play offered at launch is mostly comprehensive. Aside from the disappointing lack of local PC coop, there’s almost everything else you may want from a Borderlands game. Both the campaign, and Chaos Chamber are fully playable in coop, and both could be matchmade for all those searching for people to have fun with. In addition,
