Return To The Borderlands

The Long Anticipated Drop

As you undoubtedly already know, Borderlands 3 dropped mid- September and has been receiving a lot of attention. Like any new game it has had its fair share of ups and downs from a gamers standpoint. I’m here to tell you why you 100% should own this game.

Enter The Borderlands

For fans of the series, loading up the game and making it through the introduction videos was an anxiety ridden process. After all it, had been five years since we last got to see new playable content. As nice as it was to hear Marcus chide us about the dangers of the Borderlands… I was ready to embark on my Skag slaying way tearing asunder the denizens of Pandora.

What I’m Not Going To Tell You

I’m not going to tell you of the new improvements Borderlands 3 made over previous iterations. I’m not going to tell you of the weapon improvements such as multiple firing modes or customizable weapons. I’m not going to tell you that there is now a ton of new planets each with unique enemy types to slay your way through. I’m certainly not going to tell you about the vast array of customizable vehicles, each loaded with bloodletting options that will tickle the inner bandit in each of you while getting you to and fro in 100% customizable style. No, I won’t tell you those things, chances are you’ve already heard the masses celebrating those innovative touches already.

What I Will Tell You

The character build options are massive and unique, each offering as many interesting archetypes as you could want from four playable characters. Borderlands has come a long way in its ten year history and it shows in these four affable toons varied personalities and skill trees.

The play through is amazing! What’s more amazing is hearing Destiny 2 fans say “But I’ll have to play through the game four times if I want all four characters maxed.” Silence Destiny 2 fans! I happen to know for a fact that between strikes and varied repetitive missions, you’ve played through yours 100 times and will do so another 100 times if Bungie bribes you with a purple gun. Poor Destiny 2 fans, they just don’t know the unbridled joy of a loot’splosion! The play-through is quippy and fun and with an overload of enjoyable side missions, sharable weapons and hilarity.

Dispelling The Rumors

Here it comes, are you sitting down? Borderlands 3 has varied and extensive endgame content! Sure does. Plus, once you’ve beaten the story line you can unlock a difficulty modifier called Mayhem Mode that adds random enemy buffs to all enemies. There is 3 Mayhem Modes to choose from with the third being the toughest. Now lets break the endgame content down for you shall we?

Circle of Slaughter

The game features not one, not two, but three horde maps, each with their own difficulties. Nothing fancy here, survive four waves of increasingly more savage enemies to progress to the next round. It takes five rounds (twenty five waves) until you progress to a boss round and can complete the mode. While not a new concept, the Borderlands 3 Horde mode is one of the most challenging encounters I’ve ever experienced in a video game. You really want a team of four maxed out and heavily equipped vault hunters if you’d like to complete this mode on max difficulty for some serious rewards.

True Vault Hunter Mode (TVHM)

Okay, so you’ve beaten the game have you? Took a break and played another new release for a bit. Maybe you’re missing the Borderlands a bit, but you know that with your maxed out toon and awesome weapons that the next play-through will be easy right? WRONG!

TVHM is your next step. Yes, its another play-through however the challenges are much much more difficult and the XP and loot gains are increased as well so you can keep leveling away. Grindy you might say? Perhaps, but it’s a looter shooter, didn’t you expect some grind? Personally I found TVHM a lot of fun and worth the time. I caught a lot of story-line I would have otherwise missed and discovered a metric s*** ton of Easter eggs and hidden map areas.

Guardian Ranks

Upon your very first completion of Borderlands 3 you will unlock Guardian Ranks. What the hell are Guardian Ranks? Glad you asked. This unique system is based on a separate experience bar and allows you to earn and unlock unique buffs for all of your characters. Yep, you heard that right! Guardian Ranks are not toon specific and will buff ALL of your characters across a dynamic range of values that you can select from! Better gun accuracy, critical damage, shield capacity, action skill cool-down and even your ability to get rare loot drops are just a few of the intrinsic buffs. Take THAT Destiny 2!

Proving Grounds

Now these are interesting. Proving Grounds are co-op missions that you can take on solo or with friends. The objective is to kill everything in your path while progressing from point A to Point B and defeating a boss before the timer runs out. Simple enough in theory.

The fun of these six different “Proving Ground” challenges, is adding the multitude of random variables of Mayhem Mode which can drastically change the effectiveness of your build and the weapons you are using. For instance, if Mayhem Mode integers reflect that electric weapons do 75% less damage and enemy shields are tougher, you may want to seriously adjust your load-out to include some corrosive weapons to help take down enemy shields. Being as Mayhem Mode variables are completely random, you never really know what you’re in for.

Post Release Content

Sounds cooler than DLC right? Look, I know many of you are rolling your eyes at me reading that title and thinking “Whiskey, why the hell are you including DLC that’s not out yet in a game review article?”

Let me tell you why. I am a huge fan of the Borderlands series and I can tell you for a fact that Gearbox takes its DLC seriously. Previous DLCs for other Borderlands games have been damn near as large as the base game and loaded with side missions, farm-able bosses, and other unique things to do. They even drop new playable characters, AHEM, unlike another game that I can think of but won’t mention again. Whats better than that? Knowing Gearbox has promised a few FREE DLC packages! I think we can all afford free!

That Is All Folks

Not really, I could go on and on about this game. I won’t though because honestly if I haven’t wet your appetite by now, I’m probably not going to be able to do so and I’m just wasting both of our time. That said, if I’ve made you even the slightest bit curious or excited to see all that Borderlands has to offer, then you should definitely go on and buy it! Add me on Xbox live (KSI WHISKEY82) I will gladly play this gem with any one of you wonderful KSI folk. Until next time, stay salty D2 fans! 😉

If you have an article idea or something you’d like to see me write about or even if you just have comments or hate-mail about this article? Hit me up on Discord, I’d love to hear from you! KSI WHISKEY82#0642.