A little over three years ago I put out a review for Borderlands 3 that covered up to the Mad Moxxi’s Heist for the Handsome Jackpot DLC. I played it on PC and had a really good time with the game. This time, I decided to pick up the whole game and DLC for PS5 and give it another go, with the aim of doing all the DLC. It was a long road, but in the end, I got all the trophies for the game and each piece of DLC that was released. Was it worth it?
I wont go into a full review of the game but just some of my thoughts from this playthrough. I really do enjoy the gameplay loop of the Borderlands games. I love creating a character and leveling them up and finding new weapons that suit my playstyle. It’s a good gameplay loop that they do exceedingly well. They’ve also improved the combat and controls over the prior games so that really goes far in modernizing this series for today’s players.
I must say, this game was just as enjoyable to play as my other playthrough. The combat and gameplay loop are enjoyable and keep you on the hook to find that next drop that will increase your stats one way or another. Once I finally got into the mayhem levels, I put on some modifiers to increase my loot and money drops. Towards the end of my whole playthrough I could max it out and still survive, even though it didn’t feel that fun to play since enemies would take too long to kill. I worked out a way to get some Mayhem 10 weapons and dropped the Mayhem difficulty back down a bit so that I could dominate most enemies in a hit or two. That way I could sweep through the DLC at a quicker pace.
Going for the trophies of the main game and all the DLC in one go was really something for a continuous playthrough. I probably wouldn’t recommend it. It would have been better if I was playing it as they came out, having breaks in between each drop. Doing it this way kind of burned me out on the game at the end there. That’s not necessarily the games fault though, my OCD would kick in and I’d just want to button up the game before putting it down since I knew it’d be a while until I’d pick it back up again.
I still don’t really care for the story, that hasn’t changed since my last playthrough. I just don’t find any of it funny but it seems like it’s really trying to be funny. Then need some people who understand more subtle humor if they’re going to try and make this many jokes all the time.
The game played really well on PS5 at a nice 60 FPS and 4k resolution. It felt good to play, so no worries there. The load times seemed improved over what they were before, but it definitely isn’t using the full speed and benefits of what the PS5 could do. This is probably more related to the underlying architecture of the game and how it was originally designed and the engine involved.
Final Score – Same as before!
I really enjoyed this game. I wish my brother was available to have co-op’d the game with me since it’d be perfect for that. It also makes me want to give that Tiny Tina’s Wonderland a shot as well.
One more thing. The Jacobs guns are the best to use in the game. I just love the mechanical feel. I’ll take that over a slightly more powerful gun from another manufacturer.
Ghost Ba Bomb 