Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - Review
Gearbox have been pretty busy lately, they have made Borderlands 3 and an insane amount of DLC for it, plus their publishing arm has brought out quite a few games, what ever their next game was though, it had to be big. Tiny Tina being the star of her own game, was not what I was expecting at all and while there is a lot of new content to enjoy, there is also the same old Borderlands lying underneath it all.
There are two tales being told within the world of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, the first is the story that brings Valentine and Frette together with Tina, along with the Dragon Lord. The second story is the one that you will spend the most time getting to know, as it is the one that is being played out on the table ahead of you, via the Borderlands versions of Dungeons and Dragons, aptly called Bunkers and Badasses. For the most part, all the characters that you meet are new, outside of the titular Tiny Tina of course, but there are a few additional folks that you will meet along the way, like Torgue. The new folks are more eccentric than any other in the series history but are also more entertaining and relevant than ever as well, it is a fine line but the game manages to stick to it, mostly. The general story, for the game you are playing, is that the Dragon Lord has broken loose and is now set to destroy/take over the world and only you can stop him, the end goal is not all that original, but again the game manages to make things fun along the way.
The story is broken up by segments of the ‘real’ world breaking in, usually when a new and important character is being introduced, much like how the main Borderlands games would have cards appear to address important characters. Most of the time though, you get exposition on Valentine and Frette from the voice over that pops up, a lot of it is tied to the events happening on screen, but there are still nuggets of good to be found amongst their exposition. The downside though is that once again, you are not able to influence the story and it is a more egregious sin this time, as you are a person, who is playing a role-playing game, where player choice is at its core. I get not being able to select every detail over the world and such, a good Bunker master should have that done already, but when you encounter a door that is locked, you don’t get to choose how to open it, one of the other characters makes the call. Sure, you can argue that they paid to have actors come in and record the lines, but it wouldn’t have been much more difficult to have them record extra. Regardless of that, the story is still entertaining, I did especially enjoy the pirate themed section, but as there are a lot of moments that are not directly connected to the main quest line, I won’t spoil them here for you.
On the gameplay side of things, there are some really good and some really bad, but as always, let us begin with the good and for that we need to cast a spell of revealing, it’s spells, the game has magic. For the most part spells in the game act more like your grenades from the main series, but here there are cooldowns attached to them, meaning that you can’t just spam them, but it also means you don’t have to hunt around for grenades once the battle is won. Spells can have effects, like ice or fire, so ensuring that you have a few types in your inventory that you can swap to, is something you should do, because there are plenty of characters that are immune to some elements and swapping them out is critical. Another big addition is the melee weapon, sure you can still punch folks if you don’t have one equipped, but now you can head out with a two-sided axe and unleash a devastating blow onto enemies. Much like the spells, there are perks and cons to each melee weapon you can select, elements like swinging speed are not something you would have dealt with before. If you can believe it, there is a few more things, namely rings, these can be worn in order to provide extra buffs, like additional melee or spell damage.
Character classes are all new in the Wonderlands and while the names sound different, they generally fit most roles you will have come to know from the series past, though that is not always true. For my review, I went with the Clawbringer because they had a wicked little Wyvern to fight alongside them and for the most part things went ok there. As I leveled up, I was able to give more skills to my little companion and they in turn were better in combat, sometimes taking out enemies that I hadn’t even seen yet, while I was focusing elsewhere. Once you hit level 15, you unlock the ability to have a second class linked, letting you purchase their skills and use their talents, for me I elected the Stabbomancer, as there were skills that were perfect to help me deal out more damage. Guns also make a return, I mean it’s a Borderlands based game, of course they were and while they now mostly shoot arrows and such, instead of regular bullets, the effects of them are still the same.
When you are not in one of the many locales, you will be in the overworld, which is better thought of as the tabletop portion, literally the thing you, Valentine, Frette and Tina are all standing around. The overworld contains mission givers that will task you with completing various missions on it, like mining ore and such, but there are also dungeons that you can enter. These dungeons are not like the main levels, there is no starting point and end point to walk towards, no they are more like combat arenas, you will spawn in and then have to complete whatever objective the dungeon has for you, usually killing a lot of people. Some of them are single room dungeons, you complete the objective, and you are done, but others, usually defined by the large door with the ominous face on it, contain multiple rooms, that end with a boss room that spawns, you guessed it a boss. These are dangerous to go into, if you are not prepared, as those final rooms can spawn a dozen enemies and more within a few minutes, each with attacks of the normal and elemental variety and then the big boss to deal with. Beyond those dungeons there are bandit camps, which then act like dungeons, 20-sided dice to find and shrines to resurrect and those are where you will want to ensure you sort out. The shrines have permanent buffs, like increasing your walking speed on the overworld, which your will want to do as soon as you can, because the default speed is horrible. There are dangers on the map, much like Pokémon if you wander into the tall grass, you can get pulled into a battle and there are countless chests scattered about the place, but some are mimics, which can again trigger a battle.
Sadly though, we must address the bad and that is all connected to the rules that the team at Gearbox established back with the original game. Chests and loot boxes must still be manually opened, sure I get the metal safe needing that, or even the giant loot chests, but the rest should be able to be shot open at this point. Also, unless the character has a mission for you, they all just sort of stand there, no matter if its Brighthoof or any of the other locales, the end result is that it all feels dead, compared to other open world shooters. The menu system has been given an overhaul, at least mostly in the visual sense, there are still the same clunky navigation and item management issues that the other games have had as well, trying to sort through a dozen guns and then shields, melee weapons, outfits, spells and more is a nightmare. If there ever is a Borderlands 4 or a Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands 2, then they need to fix this, it has been 13 years since the original game released and changes are most assuredly needed now.
On the game’s presentation, there are plenty of good and some weird and for a change of pace, lets stick with the weird, the game has the same slow load in that all other games have had as well. Only this time, the game took a long time, like double digits long, to load in the higher resolution textures, this meant that I would load into a new space and then be able to run around and shoot some enemies before the game had finished loading in things. I honestly would have preferred a few extra seconds on the load screen, if it meant that I didn’t have to see that each and every time I went somewhere new. Something else that was a weird, was that the game would stutter a lot, each time the game disconnected from Gearbox’s Shift service, which is used to allow crossplay and obviously as the game is not publicly available, that service wasn’t working. If it was a single disconnect that caused the stutter, it wouldn’t have bothered me, but it would then also stutter as the game reconnected, but what made things bad was that the connection would drop and restore every 10 minutes or so. If the connection was this shaky when there couldn’t be more than 1000 people connected to it now, how it will handle things when tens of thousand join on release day?
Moving onto the good things there is a lot to enjoy, purely because everything seems so fresh and while yes, there is the same underlying Borderlands visual style to it all, the move to mystical and magical means that things are more magnificent than ever. The Overworld along looks great, you can see where someone has taken the time to craft the world, carving out mountains and such, but then you turn the camera, and you will see a matchstick, or a q-tip being used as makeshift construction materials. When you do venture into the kingdom of Brighthoof or the dank woods nearby, things have a magical touch and not because of the rainbows or sixty-foot-tall mushrooms, though they help. The world is brighter and more colourful, which helps make it feel like a place you want to explore and sure there are some elements that feel familiar, dropping into boss fight rooms and such, but there is more charm in the lead up to take that sting away.
Beyond the world, the characters are charming and unique, with a lot more detail that you would expect, from the mushroom folk to skeletons and goblins, landsharks and pirates, they all look great. There are some moments when you can get up and close to some of the enemies, before they start trying to turn you into Swiss cheese and when you can, the detail is impressive and while there are the usual variety on the original design, they stand out from each other, so you won’t get them mixed up. Your character is locked to the first-person viewpoint, but you do see them when you go into the menu, but now the game has a photo mode, letting you see them from all angles, what I did like, was that there is no restriction on voice/gender during the setup, meaning you can enjoy the combination you want. The game even presents pronoun choices, letting you select the combination that best works for you.
On the sound side of things there is a lot of good, the music as always in the Borderlands world, is excellent, a lot of the tracks fit the locations well and when the action ramps up, so does the music. There is going to be a lot of attention paid to the voice acting, but that is what happens when you have Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes and Will Arnett join the cast. Ashley Burch is back as Tina and for those that care, she is voicing the younger self, so somewhere between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 and never once, did she feel wrong, such is her skill at voicing Tina. Your character though, that is a mixed bag, there are a handful of voices to enjoy, gruff was the one I went with and while you can modulate the tone a little, I went with something closer to my voice actors’ normal range, because mine was voiced by Christopher Sabat, best known as the English voice of Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. The issue I had with the voice, wasn’t the quality of it – that was great, but instead the frequency of how often they would mutter random lines. I would be reloading a gun and my character would say ‘Ah Cartography, my first love’ when there is nothing remoting related to maps happening on screen, or as the Clawbringer, claiming how he saved his Wyvern, or how he really saved him. There were times when I would hear the latter line uttered multiple times within the same dungeon instance.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands has expanded the traditional Borderlands experience in ways that I wasn’t expecting, and yes, at its core it is still very much like the traditional Borderlands we have come to know and love, but there is something more here. The world is vibrant and full of charm, the characters you meet, both in the world and around the tabletop are fun and provide a lot of enjoyment when they speak. But for all that has changed, there are just some elements from the series legacy that need to be either overhauled or removed, as they weigh down the experience and couple that with some weird loading and network issues, can make it feel like its far to old school for a modern game. If you can look past those issues though and I hope you do, you will find a game that has loaded the dice in your favour, so I say roll the dice, it is worth it.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by 2K
The Pros
+The combination of a new world and magical elements, combine to make everything feel really fresh
+Melee options, spells and character enhancements make you feel like your character is yours
The Cons
-Weird loading issues make the world take far to long to look as beautiful as it can
-There are some original Borderlands designs that feel very out of place in this game and it drags the experience down
