- Overview
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a spinoff of the popular looter-shooter franchise Borderlands and is based off of the insanely popular Borderlands 2 DLC (Down Loadable Content) Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. Wonderlands features a lengthy and hilarious campaign comparable to any Borderlands game. Just like most games that come out today it’s not perfect. However, game was finished during the course of lockdowns and through transitions to working from home, so I will factor this into my review.
- Story (Spoiler Free)
Wonderlands sports a 35+ hour campaign which takes the player through various environments including; grasslands, deserts, and even some underwater sections. You fight armed to the teeth up against a newly awakened, evil Dragon Lord and his skelly army as he, very slowly, gathers souls to destroy the game board. Seriously, not all Dragon Lords are evil. You, as the newbie, are joined by the Game Master: Tina, the Murder-Bot: Frette, and the Hopeless Romantic: Valentine as they give you some Borderlands style guidance as you play through the hilarious campaign.
- Gameplay
This being a spinoff of the Borderlands games and not a main title, there are some big differences, most of them good. First, let’s take a look at the character creation, unlike the main Borderlands games where you chose a ready made character. You instead make your own in a normal role playing fashion though it is bare bones at the start, you can find more customization items through gameplay so you go girl. Next, you get to chose your class, there are 6 at the moment with others to come later. Later on in the game, you can choose another class to further customize your character. Second, the next biggest addition are melee weapons and spells. So instead of shoot, loot, shoot, you can now shoot, bonk, loot, bonk, shoot.
Writer’s note: one of my favorite spells conjures up and exploding barrel that’s hurled at my enemies. EXPLOSIONS!!!
- Problems
This section will be pretty short but hopefully it won’t be added to in the future. The soundtrack is pretty thin having only one back ground track for most areas. There are classes that are clearly weaker than the others (Clawbringer), even as of the writing of this review. Legendary spells while unique are not as powerful as purple spells, the best being an Ice Spells as of the writing of this review. With the expansion of end game levels the build diversity has greatly decreased. Finally, the first DLC was a major disappointment only being a wave based hoard mode my sources say.
- Personal Thoughts
Despite its flaws, I did enjoy playing Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and I do recommend picking it up. However, I would wait until all of the DLC has been released, the endgame is capped out, and most of the above problems might be fixed. I have been casually playing Wonderlands since its release and this review is for the casual audience. For now, I’m going to enjoy continuing to gear up my Clawbringer/ Spore-Warden (yes, I know).
Keep on playin’ on.
J.C. Whetsell.