Gearbox has gotten a shitload of mileage out of the Boardlands formula of looting and shooting, mixing with the satirical humor through out to make the experience usually fairly enjoyable. Though there have been a few misses either due to bad writing or poor game balancing. BL2 is pretty much the stand out as the best game in the series with great characters, fun action, and a decent story all the way through. BL3 was still good from a gameplay perspective but missed hard in both character and story.
Tiny Tina's Wonderleands takes that Boardlands formula which is still good, but for the first time adds an extra layer on top of it that I think just works really well. The premise is you are an unnamed character (until you name them) playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons in which Tiny Tina is the dungeon master. I don't know why Gearbox thinks Tiny Tina is such a good character, i find her annoying in most games, but she's actually pretty good here.
Anyway you are playing as a self made character of a variety of different classes in a DnD game. The world is medievl fantasy and it's a welcome change.They have gone through great lengths to make the gunplay in the game make sense for a DnD-style world...Tina says guns exist so they do. But to be fair the guns have a magical flair to them, like a shotgun I have that is powered by magic crystals and shoots energy bullets. Or my handgun which is totally a handgun but it have a small crossbow at the end of it to make it fit the "theme". Otherwise it's like playing a Boardlands game, except instead of a Handsome Jack or some other shitty villian in your ear, it's Tiny Tina narrating the game along with advice from your party members who don't actually play the game with you unless you are co-opting.
There classes are nice and they all feel really different from any previous boardlands game, and the RPG touches that they've thrown into the game are really nice. Like backgrounds you can pick for your character for small stat boosts like in DnD. I ended up being a Brainless Idiot Swordmancer, which means I have a flying sword and some extra strength but my spells aint so hot because I'm dumb. Outside of the typical gunplay, melee, and super ability on a cooldown liek previous games, you also have a spell slot. There are spellbooks that drop like normal gear that you can equip in your spell slot granting you the ability to cast a spell on a short cooldown. This adds yet another combat option which is nice and I can call down a small meteor to do massive aoe damage every 20 seconds or so.
They've also brought a lot of the dungeons and dragons world into the game. There are locations that play out like a typical Boarderlands level, but tranversing between different locations is done via the World Map. The world map is actually made up like a giant board game, you move yoru character freely around the board where everything is miniature like on a DnD map. on the overworld there are chests, shortcuts, quests, npcs, and tall grass. Yep, like pokemon going into the tall grass will spawn random encounters which teleport you into random arenas where you'll fight a couple waves of enemies for EXP and loot at the end.
All of this serves as a nice shake up to the typical formula and the RPG humor is on point here. The bad guy is good, the characters are funny, the story is funny, the game is just fun. It's not taking itself too seriously, but it feels like it was well thought out and they put in a serious level of care with the design of this game.
If you are a fan of looter shooters, or a Boarderlands fan but didn't like 3 for any reason, this game i think is very much worth a play. And it continues the track record of 2022 being pretty fucking good.
As a side note, I wont do an impressions of Kirby because I can't think of anything to say about it really. It's good, it's fun, it's friendly, it's Kirby. Get that if you like Kirby games, that's also really good.
Tiny Tina's Wonderleands takes that Boardlands formula which is still good, but for the first time adds an extra layer on top of it that I think just works really well. The premise is you are an unnamed character (until you name them) playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons in which Tiny Tina is the dungeon master. I don't know why Gearbox thinks Tiny Tina is such a good character, i find her annoying in most games, but she's actually pretty good here.
Anyway you are playing as a self made character of a variety of different classes in a DnD game. The world is medievl fantasy and it's a welcome change.They have gone through great lengths to make the gunplay in the game make sense for a DnD-style world...Tina says guns exist so they do. But to be fair the guns have a magical flair to them, like a shotgun I have that is powered by magic crystals and shoots energy bullets. Or my handgun which is totally a handgun but it have a small crossbow at the end of it to make it fit the "theme". Otherwise it's like playing a Boardlands game, except instead of a Handsome Jack or some other shitty villian in your ear, it's Tiny Tina narrating the game along with advice from your party members who don't actually play the game with you unless you are co-opting.
There classes are nice and they all feel really different from any previous boardlands game, and the RPG touches that they've thrown into the game are really nice. Like backgrounds you can pick for your character for small stat boosts like in DnD. I ended up being a Brainless Idiot Swordmancer, which means I have a flying sword and some extra strength but my spells aint so hot because I'm dumb. Outside of the typical gunplay, melee, and super ability on a cooldown liek previous games, you also have a spell slot. There are spellbooks that drop like normal gear that you can equip in your spell slot granting you the ability to cast a spell on a short cooldown. This adds yet another combat option which is nice and I can call down a small meteor to do massive aoe damage every 20 seconds or so.
They've also brought a lot of the dungeons and dragons world into the game. There are locations that play out like a typical Boarderlands level, but tranversing between different locations is done via the World Map. The world map is actually made up like a giant board game, you move yoru character freely around the board where everything is miniature like on a DnD map. on the overworld there are chests, shortcuts, quests, npcs, and tall grass. Yep, like pokemon going into the tall grass will spawn random encounters which teleport you into random arenas where you'll fight a couple waves of enemies for EXP and loot at the end.
All of this serves as a nice shake up to the typical formula and the RPG humor is on point here. The bad guy is good, the characters are funny, the story is funny, the game is just fun. It's not taking itself too seriously, but it feels like it was well thought out and they put in a serious level of care with the design of this game.
If you are a fan of looter shooters, or a Boarderlands fan but didn't like 3 for any reason, this game i think is very much worth a play. And it continues the track record of 2022 being pretty fucking good.
As a side note, I wont do an impressions of Kirby because I can't think of anything to say about it really. It's good, it's fun, it's friendly, it's Kirby. Get that if you like Kirby games, that's also really good.
