Recent reviews by flurn

still satisfying to play after all those hours. base game is good and fun, and the expansion takes that and cranks it up to 11.
tons of content, extremely fun and deep combat system including tons of unique opponents, simple but good gameplay loop. rng is painful sometimes, but regardless if you play solo or with friends its a great experience.

soulless DEI slop. visually pleasing, but performance leaves a lot to wish for
-somewhat decent story but the other aspects aside from it are extremely repeatable especially side quests (some of which are forced)
the story eventually does get repeatable too
with spells to unlock, and most of them just end up being lazy fetch-quests

-you hear roughly the same recycled voice lines over and over again, most of the characters feel as if they were AI generated and/or
copy pasted
same goes for the player dialogue, the dialogue choices you make have absolutely zero impact on the story and feel artificial

-setting is messed up. late 19th century England with 0 accuracy full of forced propaganda slop and pointless diversity, maybe like
a quarter of the characters are white and not tr00ns in some way lmao

-castle looks great, but the open world outside is empty, there is nothing to see besides random goblin camps and puzzles. wildlife is non existent, same goes for NPCs

-filled to the brim with useless collectibbles and repetitive uninspired challenges, walk there, fight that, do it again, end up getting nothing of value, repeat
same goes for the enemies, its all spiders, goblins, trolls, and goblins again. did i mention goblins?
the gameplay has almost 0 variety to it, combat could be good but swapping spells mid-fight is clunky and weird

-unoptimized as hell, frame drops often on medium settings (yes my pc is roughly the same as recommended requirements)
not worth the money as a fan of the books i am deeply disappointed, don't bother, the series is dead

didn't like it at first when it released, but all the updates over the past 2 years made it a really great game. tons of weapons and play styles to check out, decent variety in areas. but what i love the most is village management and its depth, running around taking care of your followers. the lore is simple but interesting, runs are so fast paced its a perfect game to play when you have spare 15 minutes.
it does get repetitive eventually, but it is a lot better now that its been in 2022.

amazing alternative for PC benchmark software after a few hours into the run, trust me

insane downgrade compared to the original

devs removed literally everything, then re-added it in ow2 piece by piece pretending like it's something new. scummy system that only cares about your credit card information. terrible balance, no communication between players and developers. matchmaking is so bad i cannot express it. cancelled the massive pve and instead gave us garbage short missions for 15$ each. used to be good back in the day, now stay back from this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

its alright.
definitely got the most polished gameplay out of the entire series, different guns feel great and each character has a few different skills so there is quite a lot of variety.
character movement also feels a lot more responsive and fun compared to older releases.
the dlc packs are definitely better than the main game for the most part but they aren't too long - couple hours each if u complete them 100%.
loot- game literally pours legendary items onto you until you overflow your backpack, it's pretty fun to change guns every while imo, and the gun variety is really incredible among legendary items.

the main story however is absolute garbage and after playing through it once i would recommend going to game files steamapps>common>Borderlands 3>OakGame>Content>Paks and remove files pakchunk3-WindowsNoEditor_0 through _11 to remove and automatically skip all the dialogue in the entire game, because it's just so ear grating. (put those back in for the DLC' playthrough though)

pick it up on sales.

painfully mediocre

I tried getting into it a few times but i just can't recommend it unless you're a die-hard survival fan.

The good:
-Finding new (emphasis on new) islands and stuff feels great.
-Building the raft is quite fun, with decent variety and possibilities.
-Decent visual appearance.
-Somewhat fun with friends.

The bad:
-Extremely slow pace of game
-Repetitiveness really strikes after a few hours, 80-90% of the time you just keep doing the same cycle of activities, on the same copy-pasted islands.
I haven't gotten to the story part because i just got completely bored before reaching it.
-The shark mechanic is interesting at first but becomes an absolute chore after a few respawns, which don't take long, and besides the shark there isn't much to look out for.
-Backpack and storage management is not great.
-You stay on the ocean all the time and don't see any life in it other than the shark...? You don't even see fish in the water that later you somehow catch with the fishing rod....?

I can only hope it would get more interesting in the future, but I don't think this will be happening...

After another 700 hours i decided to re-write the review. (you can see the original one down below)

This game truly deserves the Labor of Love award. Kind and responsive developers ready to change everything to fit the community feedback (they did this once recently with a cosmetic dlc pack, and after changing added the original cosmetics FOR FREE, which is pretty neat).
Regular and fun updates, the game has tons of content already, with well developed gameplay, different missions and sandbox terrain.
Gunplay feels pretty neat and the weapon upgrades let you have a few different experiences with each.
Good character customization system. (make yourself look either like a corp goon or unhinged miner at will)
Perfect experience with friends (if you're lucky enough to have them keep playing). Game really puts the weight on co-op making the characters independent yet work even better together, with tons of play styles
to discover with each of the 4, as each one has a different general task to perform, you will surely find the one you enjoy after a short while.
The game balance is sort of alright, but could use some minor tweaks. (Looking at you, perk system!)
You can perform well with almost any setup of guns and upgrades.

DLC content is cosmetic only, but damn does it look brilliant in contrast to the base cosmetics (which are still really neat), with a price that doesn't require you to flush your entire monthly salary.
Every few months the game gets a massive season update with new assignments, game mechanics, enemies and so on, with smaller seasonal updates every now and then (Halloween, Easter etc.) bringing new AND old cosmetic items, if you weren't there the previous year to get them. Despite the battle pass system, the game has 0 FOMO, all the missed content gets added into the in-game store (where you use currency earned for playing) or random loot drops throughout the missions.

Incredible mod support, letting you create your own missions or let any class use anything, or even just resort to memeing with minor sound or texture mods. There is thousands of player-made mods ready to use at the moment.

What sorta bothers me though is... well, a part of the community. (Nothing major, don't worry!)
Since season 3 the game got a massive, and i mean REALLY massive influx of new players.
While for the most part you're gonna run into decent people, there are a ton of gatekeepers and try-hards trying to optimise the hell out of the game while taking away the fun from anyone joining, and then kicking you out for causing the smallest inconvenience. Luckily, those are really few (in 800 hours i can probably count those meetings on a single hand) and easily avoidable in the public list, and you can just host your own games as well.
On the other side you can find die-hard sort of a ritual player group, that will spam the same role-play
meme for years with pinging stuff just to hear funny voice lines (it does get annoying after a while),
sometimes it even escalates to the point where you get team killed for not joining in on such ritual.
(that's just something i am a little tired of after all this time, you might enjoy it!)

Aside from these two groups, community is magnificent with its own small rules. (ready checks, sharing, etc.)
and if you're new you definitely will find someone kind to teach you the ways.

I would recommend this game any time of the day even at full price, the developers REALLY deserve the praise you hear around the internet. If you're a fan of co-op shooters, this title is a must-play.

If you don't rock and stone, you ain't coming home.


OLD REVIEW (outdated)

space dwarves mining in caves while commiting genocide on alien creatures

-super fun gameplay loop with a lot of different missions and 100% destructible enviroment
-excellent co-op experience with friends
-lots of different items and playstyles, 4 unique playable characters
-the entire battle pass is free and doesn't affect gameplay - no p2w garbage
-the DLC's are cosmetic items only to support the developers and look cool while doing it
-regular free content updates
-full modding support + lots of player made mods
-99% of the community is non-toxic

and most importantly you can drink beer for 10 hours while hearing your boss doesn't pay you by the hour, just like in real life

remember that if you don't rock and stone , you ain't comin home

truly amazing game at a bargain price it almost feels like you stole from the developers
+beautiful art, with every location being unique and amazing fitting music
+interesting story
+really hits the feels
+many. collectibles.

-only downside are escape sequences; time gated and fairly frustrating at times (especially the finale) with a sudden difficulty spike forcing u to figure everything out with no hints. its so damn satisfying once u get through though.

must play title even if you're not a fan of platformers

One of the best FPS roguelikes out there. Easy to pick up and play, offers (at the moment) 10 heroes (out of which 4 are DLC locked). Each one has its own playstyle and gimmicks which greatly differ from one another.

On top of that u get 50+ weapons and 150+ randomly obtainable power-up scrolls and plenty of permanent upgrades, so its quite easy to try out something new every run.

Game still gets content updates. Has co-op mode up to 4 players with instanced drops to make it fun for everyone. 2 game modes, 1 is the regular run where u can pick between several difficulties and modifiers, and another one like an arena shooter where u try to survive and then take on the boss. Plenty of areas, each one comes with its own enemies.

Lots of variety, tons of content for the price. Perfect game to load into a run when you're bored.
Definitely a great title if you're into roguelike games.