Gearbox Software probably had a big problem with what exactly should be in Borderlands 3. On the one hand, if the company decided to turn the mechanics of the game upside down, long-time fans of the series would twist their noses, on the other hand, if they decided to only polish up the elements that did not play in the previous parts, offering practically the same, they would be accused by some of cutting coupons. The aforementioned team decided on the latter solution, but I personally have no complaints about it - on the contrary: it was not possible to do it better, because Borderlands 3 is exactly as it should be.
A good loot shooter cannot do without funny shooting mechanics and a well implemented system of falling objects. Both of these elements in Borderlands 3 were implemented almost perfectly. Every time a bullet is fired at the enemy, it's really fun, regardless of whether we're defeating the first enemy, are close to the campaign's final or have just started playing with the modes available after the campaign's completion. From the very beginning, the game starts not so much with one more quest syndrome, because sometimes we don't even notice when we finished one mission and started another one, but another enemy, which we want to defeat, to feel again the incredible joy of playing with more and more sophisticated guns.
Therefore, during the game we have an unbridled desire to explore new locations, because it is in them that we try to collect everything that will fall into our hands, raising the guitars lying on the ground, as well as opening boxes and cabinets, and even looking at the toilets located somewhere, because they also sometimes hide valuable items of equipment. This sometimes leads to strange situations, because in one session we can spend as much time on shooting as on browsing the contents of our equipment and testing our weapons. This one has more storage capacity, but deals less damage per second, this one we can throw at an unexpected enemy, this one has excellent statistics, but I don't care how it shoots... And so on, and so on. Borderlands 3 is a game that requires us to make decisions every step of the way.
There's no denying that Borderlands 3 can really seem like a very monotonous game, because all the fun is focused on exploring different areas, fighting opponents and collecting new weapons. We get experience points for defeating enemies so we can advance to new leves by unlocking new active and passive skills on a variety of talent trees. In turn, the collected money will allow us to buy more extermination tools or replenish ammunition. Nevertheless, the authors managed to camouflage all this thanks to well-designed missions. Not only the tasks related to the main plot are really interesting. Side quests also deserve recognition, because it is clear that the creators attached the same attention to them as to the stages that allow us to learn more about the story, which is not necessarily engaging, but abounds in a huge dose of humour.
Borderlands 3 can, of course, be completed on its own. Especially that beyond the standard difficulty level, the authors propose an even lower level of challenge addressed to people who have not had any previous contact with the series or are just beginning their adventure with first-person shooters. However, the essence of the fun is cooperation, because Gearbox Software offers not only the possibility of cooperation for up to four players via the Internet, but also allows you to play on a split screen, so we can invite friends, acquaintances or even family members to kill more monsters together, both on Pandora and outside.
That's right. Due to a rather interesting course of events, our heroes after a few hours of struggle are forced to leave the place that we know from the previous scenes of the cycle, and ascend into the sky, to land after a while on the second of the available four planets. Each of them offers a completely different atmosphere, unique landscapes and well-designed places. Yes, it's not difficult to notice that even on the highest details the graphics leaves a little to be desired, but the amazing design of various places makes us stop for a moment to admire futuristic cities or the incredible play of light and shadow building the right atmosphere, despite the rather poor visual setting.
From the above paragraphs it can be concluded that Borderlands 3 is more of the same. That's true, but Gearbox Software has implemented quite a few cosmetic changes, which in general have an impact on the comfort of playing. We don't have to enter the menu to change the active task, but sometimes it's worth it to not start a mission that requires a character at a higher level of experience. Map is not a flat texture, so we'll read out which parts of the map are higher and which are lower - no guesswork or unnecessary combinations. Raising ammo and money is done automatically. Teleporting between locations has also been made easier, because we can use a fast journey after indicating the destination on the map (no need to look for signposts, as in the third Witcher).
One of the few drawbacks of production are very high hardware requirements. In fact, the game did not score any spectacular quality leap in comparison to the previous versions, but it requires quite powerful hardware to run smoothly on high graphics settings in Full HD quality. On a computer with Ryzen 5 2600, Radeon RX Vega 56 X OC graphic card equipped with 8 GB VRAM and 8 GB of RAM I could enjoy 60 FPS most of the time. I write "most of the time" because I've noticed quite frequent drops in the fluidity of animation in situations where more objects appeared on the screen. Besides, I didn't notice any errors, except for the fact that sometimes the screen showed the wrong button icons, which is necessary, and after turning on the map, the game teleported my cursor still the same place.
In conclusion, Borderlands 3 is phenomenal in many respects. Shooting is always fun, as is collecting new guns. Although the game itself may seem monotonous, the authors did their best to stop the viewer from watching. Not only the advantages mentioned above, but also well-designed locations and quite diverse, though based on constant fighting, tasks. Graphically it could be better, of course, but from the great visual setting I value the atmosphere much more, and this with the new work of Gearbox Software simply is not lacking.
