Borderlands 3 - The Review

this video is sponsored by display stick around to the end of the video for a special cyberpunk deal they're offering through my channel I've never found it more difficult to recommend a great game to you borderlands 3 is such a great game that it is an easy slam-dunk must-buy recommendation made nearly impossible by the douchebaggery of gearbox CEO randy pitchford the strong-arm tactics of 2k games the frankly shameless and unethical review process that 2k utilized to manipulate review scores and the horrendous state of optimization on both consoles and pcs this is such a good video game that has unfortunately been spoiled in the minds of many by pointless self-inflicted wounds on the part of those making it and publishing it I really recommend you purchase Borderlands 3 at some point because it is worth your time and money but when you buy it where you buy it and at what price point you buy it is going to depend on a whole bunch of stuff that wouldn't have mattered had gearbox and 2k put their consumers first rather than their egos their profits and their release date today's review though is not about these factors it's about the game itself and I have no problem telling you that Borderlands 3 is a meaningful improvement on Borderlands 2 in almost every way i frame it that way because this is without question more Borderlands for good or ill depending on your tastes a lot of the conversation at the moment is centered around how much this game has changed or evolved versus Borderlands 2 because a good 80% of the experience hasn't changed when the looter shooter genre as we know it has evolved considerably over that time a lot of people love the fact that this is just more Borderlands and they didn't want gearbox to fix what wasn't broken others feel like the game is too similar to what came before it describing it as Borderlands 2.5 or a glorified Borderlands 2 DLC I think this is nonsense Borderlands 3 radically improves on the core gunplay mechanics which while awesome back in the borderlands 2 days has since been eclipsed by any number of other shooters out of the market today gearbox did a lot of work here and shooting mechanics are really really strong now and go toe-to-toe with some of the best shooters on the market the chance to visit new planets adds breath to your adventure and makes it feel far more like an odyssey than before the work that's gone into designing weapons far eclipses what we saw in Borderlands 2 which back then was already doing phenomenal work and when the game is running properly the visual uplift really pops and you know appreciate how good this game looks but yeah there's a lot of [ __ ] that's still the same the open world while expansive is still really static and unchanging and lacks much of the systemic dynamism that other ludus shooters have brought to bear mission design is really stale at this point and never deviates from go here kill some dudes come back boss design swings wildly between really awesome and really boring the UI is holy [ __ ] bad especially stuff like map design waypoints and quest tracking and the writing hall boy the writing is so awful it's worse than Borderlands 2 and it's just old and outdated now like a comedian telling the same joke for seven years straight it sucks and given how weak the mission design is the lack of narrative flair really brings the experience down despite all of this Borderlands 3 is a game that shines in the moment-to-moment gameplay when you hurl your ridiculous talking gun at an enemy and it bounces crazily on top of them to do huge damage made even more huge by your loadout that prioritizes Splash Damage and your teammate to the right of you pops their super and just melts everything and loot rains from the heavens and man I wish I was playing it right now I really do but I have to do a review for you so here we are just to make it easy I'm gonna break this down into three sections stuff that's better than borderlands 2 stuff that's worse and stuff that's the same with the game this similar to its predecessor I think looking at it this way is helpful but if you've never played a Borderlands game before don't worry it'll all make sense I scream my entire Borderlands three playthrough and very often people would ask me if they'd never played a Borderlands game before should they buy Borderlands 3 or should they check out - first I told them that - is probably a good starting point since you can get it for around five dollars on Steam or a cheap secondhand copy on console and since two and three are so similar you'll be able to make up your mind based on that the one caveat I always offered though was about gunplay if you go back to play Borderlands 2 today you're going to see weapon mechanics that feel really dated the best way to describe them is sort of floaty all the weapons feel really light in your hands their recoil doesn't really register properly and the sound design isn't as meaty as we're used to today I Loki think this was one of the reasons why the pre-sequel wasn't as successful as it might have otherwise been the pre-sequel launched on the 14th of october 2014 and only one month earlier destiny launched now say what you will about the launch date of destiny and there is plenty to say but the weapon mechanics in that game were the best we'd ever seen in first-person shooters and with that sort of quality Barnow said the pre-sequel just felt old and outdated as soon as it was released things are very different here in Borderlands 3 weapon mechanics have been completely redesigned from the ground up and feel fantastic across the board there's a few specific archetypes that are employed for each weapon category like pistols for example when you could have a really stable rapid-fire burst weapon or a six-shooter that has a moderate amount of kick per shot or a big meaty hand cannon that booms with every shot fired there are pistols but they all feel markedly different there's a lot of these weapon profiles in the mix at least I'd say 15 or 20 so there's a huge amount of range and diversity in the way that weapons are going to handle and give it how often you're gonna be cycling through different weapons the work that's gone into these really impressive weapon mechanics goes a long way towards keeping the game feeling fresh no matter how long you end up playing it this leads to the next point about weapon design and how much of a step up it is here in Borderlands 3 Borderlands 2 already had some really crazy ass weapons that was its thing that was what kept you coming back to Borderlands Borderlands three tops that with ease and you really start to feel it immediately like in Borderlands 2 for example the game was pretty limited with its weapon design while you were levelling offering just different combinations of elemental damage with different weapon types but in Borderlands 3 right from the get-go you start getting some absolutely insane weaponry from rocket launchers that feel like BFGS to grenades that create icicle minefields to an actual weapon possessed by handsome Jack that talks to you as you kill things a natural point of reference here is again destiny where it's exotic weapons are the real showcase weaponry lovingly handcrafted to deliver new gameplay mechanics with each weapon but Destiny's exotics are special they're rare they're limited Borderlands 3 is like playing destiny if every single weapon was an exotic and where the legendary drops are like eight deaths and the exotics rolled into one it's just this constant barrage of [ __ ] awesome game-changing loot coming at you all the time and it's such an important reminder of the roots of this ludus shooter genre like with destiny and warframe in the division so much of what that genre has become is about this incremental grind towards power like you do your dailies and your weeklies and your raids and you craft all the stuff yeah it's a lot of work to get what feels like pretty - stat upgrades at the end of the day I like it don't get me wrong I I really enjoy that loop but it does feel like work the genius of Borderlands is that you don't have to put all that work in because there's just so much amazing loot to be had that the developers don't need to portion it out slowly and because there's no PvP to worry about the developers don't need to worry about annoying [ __ ] like balance they just make it rain and that means that the looters shoot a feedback loop isn't built on boring numbers but on game-changing weaponry giving you more interesting ways to blow [ __ ] up and in 2019 that rings out is a pretty important message to take note of what else is better the visuals right so a lot of people are like Duke sousou's brutal nerds to really bro does it really look the same you're gonna tell me that these two games look the same no they don't Borderlands 3 when it isn't lagging and stuttering looks fantastic there's a lot more detail on weapons on characters in the environments and particle effects in lighting in everything it's just a way better game than any one that says otherwise it's being disingenuous whatever I think it's a mix of better and the same is boss design now I think there's about 15 bosses in Borderlands 3 I don't know I'd say probably 10 of those are pretty phoned in you're talking just a dude standing in the middle of a room yelling things with some basic mechanic like the floor is lava but there's a good 5 bosses which are really really impressive I won't spoil all of them but I've spoiled just this one to show you how good it gets at one point I'm making my way through this carnival-themed level which is awesome by the way and just when we're about to fight the boss the entire level gets up on wheels and starts doing laps around the desert this felt like a boss in Shadow of the Colossus more than a born landslide and the final final boss as part of this encounter was just as impressive I guess the last thing I want to call out is the twitch integration now I know this doesn't affect the vast majority of people playing but if you're someone who does stream or watches Borderlands strains this is pretty damn cool whenever the person playing levels up the audience gets a pop up allowing them to vote on the contents of a loot pinata that appears and whenever the streamer finds a red chest people in the chat have a chance to win a copy of the items and sometimes the chat could even take over control of a badass enemy buffing its stats healing it and receiving loot themselves if they're badass manages to take down the streamer I've heard of some other games having list after this but I think this is the most comprehensive implementation of a twitch extensions we've ever seen to date and I'm certain that a lot of games will look to emulate this given how important streaming now is to video game marketing plus it's just super fun and I loved it so anyway those are all the best parts of Borderlands 3 and the parts that have improved the most from Borderlands 2 now let's look at some of the crappy stuff the way even though I'm totally unarmed can't let him know you're afraid and totally defenseless bro bandit life PC gamer were one of the few outlets that 2k deign to give an early review copy - and their critique was rather scathing citing the games writing story and characters as particularly weak quote it's stuck in the late thousands when surface level vulgarity was enough to qualify as edgy Borderlands 3 is seriously obsessed with turds and when the series was first conceived its stuck in a time when memes lasted months rather than days when referential humor was still a novelty and not exhausting when you could point at something the slightest bit abnormal or gross and call it a joke simpler times not necessarily better times given the fact that review code was so limited the internet spent a lot of time arguing about whether or not PC gamer just didn't get Borderlands humor or if they had a point now that everyone has their hands on the game I think a pretty clear consensus has emerged PC gamer spot-on here and this writing sucks gag balls the premise of Borderlands 3 is that the new villains twins combo Troy and terrine are in a diabolical quest to open the vaults scattered throughout the solar system leading to the opening of the Grand vault which will make them all powerful blob a blast and stuff the twins really really blow their streamers apparently but all this means is that when they wax lyrical overcomes they keep referring to their followers and their subscribers and they make videos which are meant to be me me but they're really just cringe [Music] you know choosing streamers as villains wasn't the worst idea ever but the petrolatum here is so boomer like there's legitimate comedy to be made about what goes on in the world of live-streaming and content creation from like spicy cosplay to gamer girl bathwater to filming inside a toilet to the enduring appeal of Bob Ross dreams but none of this is tackled here so the whole stream of thing is just dumb window dressing that allows the writers to inject some topical buzzwords on top of random acts of villainy like whoo I totally killed that guy like and subscribe bro it's it's literally like that sometimes a lot of people are gonna say that it's an impossible task to top handsome Jack but I just don't buy that as an excuse yeah Jack was an amazing villain like honestly one of the best villains in video game history but other sequels in movies or books or games managed to top their villains or at least deliver something as good the twins are not even close and I was so glad to have finish the campaign because I knew I'd never have to hear their annoying voices again what broadly the games humor is just spent like I loved Borland's to humor it was funny but this is basically taking the exact style of jokes that were peppered throughout Borderlands 2 and just pouring them on like the source cap broke when you were shaking it and now your cornflakes are covered in ketchup if I was to summarize it I put it like this Borderlands 2 had two standout characters clap chat for his crazed obnoxious oblivious confidence and handsome Jack for his comically sadistic evil oh and also face maturity back out the rest of the cast was okay but they really just took a step back and let claptrap and handsome Jack do the heavy lifting Borderlands 3 is like if every character has to be either handsome jack or claptrap every character has to be completely over-the-top obnoxious crazy maniacal sadistic masochistic oblivious indifferent you name it there's just so much of this [ __ ] coming at you all the time and you just tune it out eventually because it all sounds the same I've seen a lot of defenders of this writing saying like well that's just boy learns bro but I'd remind you that it's actually not like firstly it was straight-up better crisper and more tactically deployed in Borderlands 2 but second you really need to go and play tales from the borderlands to see how Borderlands writing and human can evolve tales from the borderlands is so funny and so Borderlands it doesn't compromise anything at all it feels so authentic to the world while delivering a brilliant suite of lovable characters tense drama and emotional send-offs there's a template that was laid down here that Borderlands 3 did not seek to replicate and the game is far worse for it outside of the writing the only other thing that really stands out as worse here in Borderlands 3 is the UI which is a combination of the fact that it hasn't evolved with time and also that parts of it are objectively worse specifically the map my god this [ __ ] map it's like a map from Metroid Prime except the developers have made no effort whatsoever to show how areas connect vertically and they also just don't realize that a play area this big needs a different sort of map navigating it is a genuine nightmare and you typically need to spend a good 30 seconds zooming in out twisting it left and right scrolling through icons etc just trying to navigate your ship in this game is problem enough and the actual world maps feel far worse related to this is the fact that you cannot track multiple quest objectives at once you'll pick up side quests as you go and unless you're tracking them you can't see the objectives on your map which means that you'll often clear an area only to realize you need to clear it again because a side quest you needed was right there I don't know why this decision was made it feels really dumb and pointless and yeah it would be great if this could be patched in beyond that the inventory screen worked back in 2012 but now it just feels really shitty to visual and not nearly functional enough you have so much loot to sort through all the time and it never feels easy to do so if modding was a thing in Borderlands 3 you can imagine that the PC community would come up with a vastly better UI in a matter of days so it's disappointing that gearbox haven't done so here after seven years the last call-out in this section has to be the game's performance across both PC and consoles which is sadly a bit of a dumpster fire on PC I was playing on an RT X 20 atti at 1080p resolution and I couldn't run the game on Ultra I had to drop everything too high and even then I had to go in and disable a whole bunch of stuff to stabilize it further generally speaking I arrived at around 60 fps when the action was thick but I would frequently drop down to 50 frames and I very often saw as low as 40 frames no amount of tinkering would change this funny thing is a lot of people with different PC configs are reporting perfectly fine performance so your mileage may vary either way optimisation is extremely inconsistent at this point and I'd recommend holding off on a purchase if you're someone that demands reliable frame rates on console the story is a mix of good and bad digital foundry did some detailed analysis on both ps4 Pro and Xbox one X and revealed that the resolution mode offering is basically unplayable struggling to maintain 30fps and often dropping to near 20 the performance mode on the other hand offers fairly stable 60fps in most instances except during driving sections where the frames can drop as low as 45 performance on standard consoles seems to be relatively stable except for split-screen which is completely unplayable due to huge FPS drops and constant stuttering it's really great that developer is trying to keep split-screen alive but it's really shitty that they released it in this state bottom line with performance across both PC and console is that this game was not ready to ship more work needed to be done to finalize the package and give it how little review code was provided to outlets it's frustrating that these issues couldn't have been highlighted earlier so consumers could have made more informed choices as I said if performance matters to you hold off on Borderlands 3 for now so that's the writing the UI and the performance some of these things are going to have a big impact on your enjoyment others not so much its objective so you can be the judge of that what might impact you far more is just how much of Borland's three is the same versus Borderlands 2 because those looking for some evolution to the formula or were hoping that Borderlands 3 might change their minds about this franchise you aren't gonna find what you're looking for here so let me start out by saying that I really enjoyed this boy land's entry despite its lack of evolution it's a case of not fixing what isn't broken Borderlands 3 taps into the core loop of unchained mayhem and generous loot splosions better than Borderlands 2 ever did and since the core loop remains as attractive as ever to sum the game still hangs together beautifully despite this lack of ideation having said that I think it's interesting to look at two parts of the game that are starting to feel rather dated in comparison to what we're seeing in the ludus shooter space presently namely well design and mission design one of the biggest changes from Borderlands 2 to 3 is the fact that we're now able to visit entirely new planets the first entries were based entirely on Pandora and while we did get some range in the environments on offer they felt pretty limited and most of our memories of Borderlands are likely set in spaces looking something like this in Borderlands 3 you'd get command of your spaceship affectionately named sanctuary and you can take to the stars in your pursuit of the various vaults hidden on different planets I really like these spaces they all look vastly different from one another they're all massive usually comprised of two or three large map areas and they will have their own suite of new enemies to encounter as far as video game worlds go they definitely look nice but the thing is they all feel pretty similar to one another visiting a new space doesn't meaningfully alter your gameplay at all except for a brief section on a moon planet where the gravity is lower you can sometimes forget where you are as you descend into the mindless looting and shooting because the environments don't really imprint themselves on your mind through unique events that take place there the worlds are also very static and unchanging devoid of any sort of systemic quality games like destiny warframe and the division have taken their open worlds and imbued in them a dynamic quality where world events pop up randomly to surprise the player or elite enemies spawn with special loot the division went so far as to make portions of the map capturable and supply lines could be established that could be a score toward or disrupted now I'm not saying that Borderlands have done any of those things but I'm saying that it's not done any of those things at all or anything else I think that we've seen some innovation and evolution in open-world design across the ludus shooter genre where Borderlands 3 demonstrates none at all same goes for mission design I have to say that I feel the mission design in Borderlands 3 was a bit of a letdown the overwhelming majority of missions would just go here kill some dudes and come back there were very few mission objectives that felt interesting or really held my attention and only a handful of action set-pieces to really spice things up I think this is a broader challenge across the ludus shooter genre which really struggles with engaging mission and quest design but I think again that there are some examples of interesting stuff going on destinies various exotic quest lines combined action puzzle solving and really challenging encounters to create incredibly memorable experiences warframes almost poetic cinematic quest lines combined narrative an action to sear the events into the players memory Borderlands threes main missions can have some moments that stand out but usually because the environments you're fighting in are especially pretty or the boss you're up against is especially awesome beyond that the core mission loop of go here and kill a bunch of dudes remains unchanged and if you found that boring in the past then you're going to find it just as boring here one thing that's the same in Borderlands 3 but I really want to call out is the awesome build diversity this is the holy grail in ludus shooters or luda games in general the idea that since players are doing the same thing all the time you need to give them interesting build options to make it worthwhile I posit though that developers have completely lost sight of this goal over the last few years Destiny's build diversity is all but non-existent as destiny to removed huge amounts of build agency in the name of both simplicity and PvP balance same goes for Division 2 which failed to provide compelling reasons to build into non damage based builds warframe does deliver meaningful build diversity across its various frames but within each of those frames there's absolutely a right and wrong way to build each of them resulting in a number of cookie cutter builds that people gravitate towards my point is that this is a genre that has at its core the promise of guild diversity but that is really struggled to deliver that Borderlands 3 doesn't struggle at all I mean I only played with one character and already I was extremely impressed by how many build options I had between my equipped weapons my shield types my stat trinkets my artifacts my talent trays I mean these talent trees you really should check them out they are huge with so many talent options and all of them are useful there's almost no filler [ __ ] in there my build with Mo's was Splash Damage focus so my mech was doing bonus splash damage with its grenades and when I did Splash Damage with say a rocket launcher they would do bonus damage and I could carry like 10 grenades which all benefit from bonus Splash Damage and when I shut things it had a 25% chance to create a small explosion which would do even more Splash Damage this was one tree from one character there are three trees per character and four characters to choose from and over a billion guns to combine with them hell I even had an artifact that shot out exploding razors whenever I would slide that's [ __ ] awesome I know it's easy to look at Borderlands 3 and dismiss it for Jorah tively as just more Borderlands because it is more Borland's but it's not just more Borderlands it's Borderlands which in 2019 serves as a stark reminder of the origins of this entire genre that's become so ubiquitous over this console generation little by little dishonour has expanded in parts like narrative or world design or mission design or rage or PvP or a whole bunch of stuff this genre is objectively larger and more fleshed out than it's ever been seven years has seen huge ideation and improvement here but parts of this genre feel like they've been chiseled back painted over weakened and forgotten PvP raids weekly quests and in-game currencies all force developers to balance and tune and portion out power in little droplets so that we never get so much as to be able to overwhelm other players or to stomp raid bosses or forget the optional micro transactions that might make it just a little bit easier to get the thrill we're chasing in the pursuit of the foreverness of the endgame these other ludus shooters keep our eyes fixed firmly on the horizon Borderlands 3 is a game that in every moment is existing in this moment live fast die young and leave a beautiful loot filled corpse it feels like the perfect antidote to everything that currently ails this genre and while it's cheap through may not seem as sophisticated as those of its contemporaries it's thrilling nonetheless and a very worthy successor to one of the greatest shooters ever made speaking of greatness how about some cyberpunk displays displayed some metal posters that stick to your walls with the power of magnets so you can easily change them around whenever you want they just launched a CD Projekt RED storefront featuring Witcher and cyberpunk displays and if you use the offer code skill up you get 15% off every purchase click the link in the description below to get started thanks to displayed for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Skill Up

Views: 610,893

Rating: 4.6930232 out of 5

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, Borderlands 3, Borderlands 3 impressions, borderlands 3 gameplay, borderlands 3 review, borderlands 3 console, borderlands 3 performance, borderlands 3 campaign, borderlands 3 legendary gear, borderlands 3 loot, borderlands 3 steam, borderlands 3 characters, borderlands 3 skills, borderlands 3 help, borderlands 3 guide, borderlands 3 walkthrough, trailer, 4k, endgame, dlc, microtransactions, borderlands 3 ps4, borderlands 3 xbox, bl3 review

Id: l8fKkLYBj8c

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019

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