Attention vault hunters! The 3rd iteration of the borderlands series is here, or is it the 5th? Well aside from the amazing story from Tales from the Borderlands it’s not a looter-shooter like the main series and we’re just going to ignore the pre-sequal and it’s horrible Oxygen meter system. So? 3rd? Makes sense it is Borderlands 3 after all.

If you’ve played any of the games up to this point the premise won’t be new to you. You choose one of the four Vault Hunters to play as and are quickly introduced to some of the well known residents of Pandora; Marcus and CL4P-TP. Your task is simple, travel the borderlands in search of keys and key fragments to you guessed it, Vaults! Not a whole lot has changed from the first game till now. You still play a vault hunter, you still shoot lots of guns, and the game still focuses on the comedy.

The choice of vault hunters are new and include: Amara, the siren of this game and focuses on using her power in melee combat. Fl4K, the robot beast master who controls a selection of alien monsters. Moze, the gunner who can summon a giant mech to assist in battle. And Zane, the operative who can teleport around the battlefield similar to Zer0 from previous games.

Aside from characters and story not a whole lot has changed. The gunplay is still solid and filled with crazy over the top weapons. Vehicle control fels better than previous iterations especially when using hover vehicles. Graphically it still has a very stylized cell shaded look but if you look closely you can see a huge level of detail with the improvments to the game engine. Voice acting is top notch though I think the intro music wasn’t as good as 1 or 2.

The biggest new addition is the ability to travel to other planets. Previous games mostly took place on Pandora with the exception of section of Tales of the Borderlands and the entirety of the pre-sequel. With the addition of the 5ish planets the amount of space you can explore is considerable. Each planet hosts is own distinct biome like the metropolis Promethea, home of the Atlas corporation, or the Tree filled swamps of Eden-6, where the Jakobs corporation gets their wood. Thankfully as I mentioned earlier the devs did away with the O2 meter from the pre-sequel, even when visiting a spacestation on an asteroid. No need for any explaination for why you can breathe, who cares, don’t need one when it makes for good gameplay. Also with opening up these planets we’re given so much backstory to characters and the corporations that have been fighting over Pandora for so long. There are also tons of cameos from previous games such as Tanis, Rhys, and a slew of old vault hunters.

Overall the story and comedy is no butt stallion but was still very enjoyable and kept me playing start to finish. This probably isn’t the borderlands to start with but it’s still a great game and any fan of the series should pick this up.

~~Josh Pang~~