Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands review

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a spinoff that continues the spirit of Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep, one of the most popular additions of Borderlands 2, independently of the main game. In the game, which takes place in the Bunkers and Badasses system, which is the equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons system in the Borderlands universe, we experience the new scenario that Tina has prepared for us.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands review

How different is Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands from Borderlands 3, released independently from the Borderlands series, how overhauled the parts of the game complained about, is it worth playing as a game on its own or are we just dealing with a fantastic makeover of Borderlands 3, come together Let’s examine.

Character Creation Time!

Our game takes place in Pandora again. We join the adventure as a beginner who started playing Bunkers and Badasses (B&B) with Tiny Tina, whom we know from previous games, and her two new friends who have just been added to the series. The game, which we set out to stop the evil Dragon Lord, offers a fun adventure with the story that changes the flow with unexpected interventions, fun side missions that bring us familiar faces and the disagreements among our team members.

The main story of the game is impressive, it doesn’t offer a mind-blowing experience, and I don’t expect to find anything like that in Borderlands games anyway. There is a world full of interesting characters, fun dialogues and enemies that we can try on the weapons we collect. Moreover, as in Borderlands 3, the meaningless jokes and the events that tried to be funny and failed were largely gone. It has a well-chosen voice cast and better written dialogue than the third game.

I’m sure those who are familiar with the game world and fantasy artifacts will have a lot of fun with the side quests. There are a lot of different side quests that refer to popular series such as Harry Potter and The Witcher. There are side quests that make you say “this story sounds familiar”, such as little goblins turning blue with a spell cast by an evil wizard. The characters from the old games of the series are also included in the story in ways I did not expect.

I wish a game based on desktop role-playing games, one of the biggest features of which is the freedom offered to the player, would give us more freedom in the choices we make in the story. Other than making small choices like killing innocents or stepping on grass to do evil, there could be things that could affect the story. They missed this opportunity.

Dungeons and Unicorns

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands manages to look different with its fantastic world and characters, but it is essentially a Borderlands game. It has most of the features of the series that you love (and probably dislike). Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which seems like a good opportunity to try new things with its structure adapted to desktop role-playing games, unfortunately did not use this opportunity much.

The game is based on hitting everything that runs towards us and collecting the items falling from them with the FPS perspective we know. Meanwhile, we listen to the story with comments from Tina, the other players at the table, and Dragon Lord. In Borderlands games we used vehicles to travel between maps, but here it is a bit different.

In most of the game, we visit the areas where we will clear the enemies and complete the missions with the FPS viewpoint. The connection between the regions is provided on an area called the Overworld, unlike the previous games. We travel with the big-headed figure of the character we created on the Overworld, do side missions specific to the region and enter the war with the enemies that randomly jump on us. Watch out for the grass.

Overworld is a well thought out but not very well executed episode. It’s full of camps to clear, random attacks, items to collect, but after a while it becomes more repetitive than interesting. The design is very beautiful, the bridges Tina made from coke caps, the hills she fastened with tapes, the obstacles like chips blocking our way were very nice, but only to a certain extent.

The loot problem that Borderlands players are familiar with is also present in this game. When you start the game, so many items drop that it becomes a burden to collect items after a point. There are too many items, and most of them soon become useless. Moreover, our inventory is very small and expensive to develop. This issue gets better once you reach the final level and start entering Mythic level quests, but it’s frustrating to get bogged down in items for the first 40 levels of the game. This could have been solved with less class-specific equipment, but I think they didn’t want to change the Borderlands formula too much.

I should also mention the mode called Chaos Chamber, which you can play after completing the story and reaching the last level. A section where you fight against waves of enemies, where you are rewarded according to the difficulty level you choose in randomly generated sections. In the mode where you have a limited number of lives, if you die too much, you have to start over. It’s a fun mod that slightly reminds you of the rogue-lite style.

Roll Twenty Dice to Attack the Enemy

If you have played any Borderlands game before, you can pretty much predict what you will encounter in this game. Firearms, throwables, shields, class abilities, and loads of collectibles await you, but there’s a difference. In accordance with the concept of the game, everything is adapted to a fantastic role-playing world. Weapons are medieval and steampunk-themed, grenades are replaced by spells, and character classes are exclusive to the B&B world. Melee weapons were also added, but they were not as well placed as I expected. Let’s take a brief look.

Even though the firearms have changed visually, they’re still the ones we know from the Borderlands series and that’s not a bad thing. After all, the B&B universe was developed accordingly. Spells that replace grenades are different from each other in terms of both visual and effect, which is a very nice thing. A lot of melee weapons with different powers and types have also been added, but their use is somewhat limited. There are also features that we can use passively and actively, depending on the class we choose.

Based on desktop role-playing games, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which is independent from the main games, left some of my expectations in the air. The two things that come to mind when talking about the fantasy world are melee weapons (especially swords) and magic. There are both in this game, but they did not stand out enough.

We can use melee weapons while performing melee attacks of the game, we do not have a chance to take the sword in our hands and dive into the enemy group. There are many beautiful weapons in the game, even classes suitable for close combat, but they did not take this chance. It doesn’t have a chance to beat the enemies by constantly spamming the melee key, but it would be a very useless option anyway.

The game has spells instead of grenades and has a lot of different types. One spell drops a meteor with different elemental effects from the sky to the enemy, while the other allows us to throw a force that affects a wide area depending on how much it is charged. All classes can use spells. I don’t think I wish the spells were a little more specific to our character class, but it’s a lot of fun to use.

We have a skill tree and special abilities according to the class we choose. Apart from two special abilities that we can use actively, we also have different passive abilities specific to the class we choose. While some classes’ attack power and abilities are strengthened, classes like Clawbringer, which is my preference, have companion creatures with them. As we level up, we can get passive reinforcements such as damage increase, shield duration or bullet replacement speed with the abilities we give. In the future, we can buy a second class and have more features. The character development side is nice, but there is not much difference because there is no class-specific equipment.

A Colorful World

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which I play on Playstation 5, comes with two different graphics options. Players who care about visual quality prefer the Visual mode, where they can play at 60 FPS in 4K resolution, while it is also possible to reach higher FPS rates in Performance mode. I used my preference on the visual quality side and played without any problems. The performance mode, which provides higher FPS, is played at 1080p resolution and stuttering may occur in crowded environments. In the following chapters, when I tried it on crowded battlefields, I did experience some minor stuttering, but overall it remains playable.

The voice cast of the game is very nice. Ashley Burch once again gave a successful performance as Tiny Tina. Andy Samberg, who you can recognize from Brooklyn 99, is one of the characters accompanying us at the game table, and Wanda Sykes is the voice of Frette. Both actors gave a very good performance, but Dragon Lord is at the top in performance. Will Arnett, the actor we know from the Arrested Development and BoJack Horseman TV series, did a great job as the villain of the game and the Dragon Lord, who always says things that make us question ourselves. Although there are different language options and one of them is Japanese, I chose to play the game in English because of the wonderful voice cast.

Conclusion

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a Borderlands game based on a fantasy theme. It’s a production that doesn’t seem like it wanted to go too far from the Borderlands series, even though it debuted independently of the main game and had an innovative foundation. The main story, which you can finish in about 9 hours, may seem like a minus, but a game full of things you can have fun with your friends awaits you. Moreover, consoles have the opportunity to take the second remote and play from the split screen. In the new generation consoles, this support is up to 4 people, so that new generation players will be able to experience how multiplayer games were played years ago. Of course, TV screens were smaller in those years. PC users do not have this game mode in a way that I do not understand.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a game that I can easily recommend to players who like the genre, with its funny moments that make me smile all the time (like the Magic missile scene), great voice acting team, and fun world. I just wish they would put a little more emphasis on melee and improve the inventory system. Even as it stands, I still think it’s the second best game in the world of Borderlands. The first is, of course, Tales of Borderlands.

Playstation 5 version of the game via Playstation Store It can be purchased with a price tag of 699 TL. Xbox Series S/X version also with the same price tag from the Microsoft store can be purchased. Gamers who want to play on PC via Epic Store You can buy it by paying 429 TL. Since the game will be exclusive to the Epic Store for a while, it is not available for sale on Steam.

No matter which platform you buy, thanks to the game’s cross-play feature, you also have the chance to join the same party with players playing on other platforms. In this way, you can play the game with Playstation, Xbox and PC users.