Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands review - Roll for more Loot — Too Much Gaming

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a looter shooter spin-off title set in the Borderlands universe. It takes place within Borderlands’ version of Dungeons & Dragons called Bunkers & Badasses, with everyone’s favorite Tiny Tina (Ashly Burch) taking on the role of ‘Bunker Master’ for the campaign set in her world, the Wonderlands. On paper, it’s more Borderlands shooting and looting goodness with a high-fantasy twist, but also a reminder that there’s still a good amount of charm that can be found in this well-established series.

In the original Borderlands, the characters, humor, visual design, and gameplay really meshed well together - I remember being deeply excited for the first game’s release way back in 2009. Three main entries and a few spin-offs later, my excitement has slowly watered down through the years, but most of the goodwill was undone by 2019’s Borderlands 3. Despite a few improvements to modernize the signature Borderlands gameplay, the forced humor from that game’s lackluster characters really hit my enthusiasm for the series hard.

Thankfully, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands didn’t have the same problem, as its batch of characters was a joy to see and hear on-screen. In fact, I think that it mended what Borderlands 3 had ruined. The humor hit all the right notes, taking jabs at RPG tropes every once in a while, and throwing in all manner of crazy situations in true Borderlands fashion, all delivered with Tiny Tina’s personality in mind; what’s more, the insanity stays consistent all through the campaign.

I wanna play Bunkers & Badasses

You’ll begin as a newbie to Bunkers & Badasses, playing as the Fatemaker with veteran B&B players Valentine (Andy Samberg) and Frette (Wanda Sykes) aiding as your advisors in your quest to defeat the Dragon Lord (Will Arnett), and save Queen Buttstallion’s kingdom and the rest of the Wonderlands from doom.

You go on this epic adventure filled with absurdity and idiocy. I was left worried that I'd find myself sinking into my chair from all the cringe dialogue, but that never happened. I enjoyed the conversations and humor, and the sidequests also featured some entertaining stories that made the detours worth the effort. All the credit goes to Tiny Tina, a likable, unhinged teenager who simply wants to play with other people in a world she created.

Since this is a game about a bunch of players playing a tabletop RPG, the game made a few changes to stay true to the concept while injecting Borderlands’ known looter shooter gameplay. In Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, you explore large areas and travel from one place to another through the game’s tabletop-RPG-inspired overworld board, another one of Tina’s creations. You control a chibi-like piece of your character as you navigate through the board to access the game’s bigger locations.

It’s a pleasant way to traverse the game. The board is filled with side quests and short encounters, which quickly transition from the overworld to small skirmishes between waves of enemies. There’s even tall grass, within which you can trigger an enemy to spawn and chase you. Should they make contact with your piece, it’ll prompt another skirmish, an obvious shoutout to JRPGs with random encounters. There’s no vehicles this time around, which is surprisingly a blessing and an eye-opener as to how little I miss having vehicles in a Borderlands game.

When a fight happens, it simply becomes Borderlands. It’s a shooter with loot dropping from every foe you kill, and you earn experience that further progresses your chosen class. There are six classes available, and while most of them sound rather unique, their roles fit the typical classes you’d expect from RPGs - there’s your spellcaster specialist, melee-focused class, rogue types, you get the idea. What’s interesting here is that midway through the game, you’ll be given the option to pick a secondary class, which is a nice change of pace as it allows the player to mix one class’ specialty with another. I could see the potential paths to take to change my character’s playstyle on the onset, fueling the urge to press on and see what I could come up with with all the loot I picked up along the way.

Itemization also feels more rewarding, as there’s more to it than just guns and shields. In Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, you have to think about your character’s armor piece, rings, amulet, ward (the game’s version of shields), and spells to strengthen your character and specialize in a certain style of play. The item progression didn’t feel mindless, as there was always something refreshing to pick up that could help your build or change it entirely.

Spells replace grenades, and prove to be far better secondary options as far as utility is concerned, since there’s a lot of spells that perform differently depending on the spellbook’s properties. From an exploding acid barrel to ice spikes that bounce off enemies, spells allow freedom to experiment beyond just tossing specialized grenades.

If you’re hoping for new concepts for weapons, I’m sad to say that there isn’t much in that department. Weapons aren't as diverse this time around, and most of the weapon types have familiar manufacturers - those seen in previous Borderlands games. There are a few weapon types with new bullet spreads, but nothing out of the box, like a walking gun that shoots.

Let your imagination run wild, please?

With Tiny Tina in full control, the enemies you face are based on her imagination. So, it's rather a mixed bag of enemy types, from skeletons, pirates, crabs, dragons, spore monsters, and even land sharks. I get that’s the point, but the problem I have is that when you spend over 20 hours in the game, you get sick of seeing the same enemy types sooner rather than later. With the game delivering good variety in characters and itemization, it’s a letdown to see redundancy in enemy types, especially when their actions mostly consist of running at you. There are unique enemies from time to time, but most of the time, the enemy’s game plan mostly feels like it’s just swarm and prey, leaving you stuck running-and-gunning in most encounters.

The pacing in some encounters can also ruin the game’s momentum, as there were times where I killed the initial wave of enemies, but then the next wave somehow spawned at the far end of the fight area, necessitating that I run towards them to continue the fight. The bosses are also hit or miss. During the campaign, I always felt overpowered, even on the highest difficulty, so I rarely got to see how cool the boss mechanics were, as they died too quickly. It’s a good thing that you get to fight these bosses again in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands endgame content, so you can really see what they’re capable of, but oh, how I wished that my first run-ins with these bosses felt like epic encounters.

The endgame grind

Just like previous Borderlands games, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands features 4-player co-op from start to finish. I did play with a friend in a few quests and experienced some disconnects here and there, which was a letdown. I also experienced constantly getting disconnected from Gearbox Software’s servers, then instantly getting connected a second later. This happened when playing solo, and it was a bit annoying as disconnections resulted in massive FPS drops for a split-second, then more drops when the game reconnected to the servers.

Once the campaign is over, you unlock Chaos Trials, the game’s endgame content, where players are put through a series of challenging encounters that have different modifiers to amp up the difficulty each time you progress. You’ll churn through waves of enemies, then fight a boss from the campaign. It’s pretty much recycled content, but it’s still fun, as it really tests how far you can go with a specific build. I’m still climbing the levels and seeing new items.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is the best modern Borderlands game out there today. Despite its issues, Gearbox Software has delivered its best take on the Borderlands gameplay, paired with genre-appropriate humor and a setting that reminded me why I enjoy diving into this type of looter shooter every now and then. I had so much of a blast going through the Wonderlands that I’d rather play more Bunkers & Badasses with Tiny Tina than go through another adventure on Pandora with a new batch of vault hunters, seeking the same old riches. If this is the direction the series will be going in the future, I’m all for it.

8/10

PROS

Great cast of characters. Tiny Tina leads the show and simply nails it
The Borderlands gameplay still feels great and has a nice twist in itemization and characters builds to fit the high-fantasy setting
Chaos Trials is a great place to really go nuts with character builds and optimization
Who would have thought that no vehicles in a Borderlands game would be a positive?

CONS

Not enough enemy variety, as I got tired of seeing the same types of enemies doing similar actions

Server issues: disconnects during multiplayer, and server disconnects/reconnects that cause FPS dips even during solo play

What I’ve Played

Reached the max level of 40 with my Spellshot character

Tried the Spore Warden and Clawbringer classes
Completed the campaign and did a good amount of side quests after more than 20 hours of game time
Spent hours playing the endgame content Chaos Trials. Reached level 15 and still climbing

Featured