I know I am the villain, but I just wanted to wish you luck on the whole quest thing. Not that you need luck right? I mean, you're the Fatemaker
Hello there my friend, were you like me and never played Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep because you owned a Wii when you were younger? Well Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was released a decade later so you can play that instead of getting Borderlands 2 and the DLC in its bundle.
For those who have been living under a rock, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a stand-alone game and not a DLC. That being said, though, this game could have probably been a DLC for Borderlands 3, but we get to pay $80 CDN for, at best, 16 hours of gameplay if you only focus on the main objectives.
Pros and Cons
Pros
A character creator option
Fantastic looter shooter gameplay with lots of loot to collect
Six different classes for you to utilize with powerful abilities
Lots of side quests and content
Cons
The writing for the story is very bad
End game content is very lacking
Crosshair is not centered
Story
The story is set after the events of Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, you are playing the game with Tiny Tina and her two friends Frette the Robot and Caption Valentine. The story is your typical DnD setting and then you slowly realize that this game's writing is awful.
Nothing interesting ever happens in this game in terms of story, the characters are all just there. While fine and interesting, the setting could have been written much better, and the fantasy element was not taken advantage of. Why just DnD though? You’re telling me that you couldn’t fit in a Magic The Gathering reference, LOTR, etc. The genre has evolved outside of just DnD. You can make DnD the focus of the game but only just having DnD is leaving a big hole in something. There are references in the game, one of the side quests pays homage to the Witcher and there is a side quest where you take out these small blue enemies that’s a reference to The Smurfs. The Witcher is a fantasy series, so it does fit very well here. There are a few others, but I just felt they could have taken advantage of this, just my thoughts.
It’s not like the characters are even any better either, there is pretty much no one in the story that is even remotely interesting besides Tiny Tina but that is because she has been part of the Borderlands story since B2. The only character I actually liked, was the main villain, The Dragon Lord because he was a parody of a main antagonist. Besides that, Valentine is also a character that I liked and was fun but that’s really it. Everyone else is poorly written and I am just waiting to move on from that character, for the game to only introduce me, to another character that I will not care about.
Gameplay
The good news for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is that the gameplay is actually really good and pretty much saves the game as a whole. It is a looter shooter and there are a lot of guns for you to collect and there are a few different rarities for them as well. Since this is based on a DnD campaigning, you do have access to magic spells that you can use to help take out enemies. The spells have a variety of effects that can help you in combat, by either damaging your enemies or activating a passive ability that your character has.
There is a character creator and there are a ton of customization options for your character, and you can even change your character mid-game. You can change anything at any point in the game too, your gender, voice, or even appearance, the options that the game gives you for your character are fantastic.
There are six classes for you to choose from in the game, I played as the Graveborn, who has a demi-lich fiend campaign and can deal dark magic attacks. The class pretty much has a built-in nuke that just deals a ton of damage. Since it’s one of its special moves, it allows it to release a burst of dark magic at the cost of some of your health, however, you will be healed for the total life you have lost. At level 20, you will unlock an ability to have a subclass with you, I choose the Clawbringer as they get a wryvn campaign that deals elemental damage. All of it just really depends on how you want to play the game.
There are also lots of side content for you to do, like side quests, exploring dungeons, or fighting hidden bosses. It’s really interesting what you can find or come across in the world you are in, there is also an overworld too, which does have a few things you can do but nothing too big.
Overall, the gameplay is really fun and enjoyable, it’s a basic FPS at its core and that’s really it at the end of it. Although I do have two issues with the game, the end-game content for the game is very lackluster. There are these Chaos Gate Challenges you can do but it’s just you fighting waves of enemies until the meter fills up. You can of course get better loot and enchant or reenchant weapons but that’s it.
Other than that, the crosshair is not centered, and I did not find out about this until 30 hours into the game and it has bothered me ever since I found out about it. The good news is, that you can change it to be centered in the options menu.
Graphics and Performance
The graphics are pretty nice, the areas all look colorful and give off this fantasy-like feel. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I had no issues with the game's performance, and it ran very well.
Final Verdict
Overall, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, is a good game but not a good good game, if you are looking for some mindless fun or are a fan of the Borderlands series. This game is a good purchase if you get it on sale. Paying full price for this game is just not worth it and there are better games that can give you more for your money. It’s a good game, like I said before, just not a good game that you would only maybe play once and that’s it.
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