A long awaited title Borderlands 3 has finally released on the Epic Games store after the failure of the Pre-Sequel and the major success of the first two installments, with predictions of moving to Steam within the near future. Achieving the very impressive number of 5 million copies sold within only 10 days as of Sept. 10, 2019. These numbers pulling ahead of its previous predecessor’s records. Borderlands 3 brings new and exciting gameplay elements as well as removing some from previous titles, such as the slag elemental that was available for various weapons. 

The new game starts out on the planet which both one and two started on, Pandora with four new playable characters, just like every other game. The characters are FL4K, Moze, Amara, Zane and the classes are beastmaster, gunner, siren, and operative respectively. It seems that in this game there is a large focus on the balancing of different classes and honestly none of them are really very good until you get into the higher levels of their trees, unlike in BL2 with characters like Salvador. Another major aspect with Borderlands 3 is the fact that throughout the story your character will interact with the rest of the characters through voice lines, which makes you feel a little more connected to your characters. 

Amara is the new siren and like all new characters, she has three skill trees.The first ability being fist of elements, which is similar to Maya’s ability in the second Borderlands, in the sense of holding an enemy in place. The second skill tree is Mystical Assault which is essentially just a bunch of phase fists that pound your enemy to the ground and the final tree is Brawl which is a melee tree that allows you to slam the ground knocking all bandits to the ground.

Zane is the operative and was an assassin, his three skill trees are as following. Barrier which is exactly what it sounds like, a barrier that is put down to tank damage for you and your friends, I would say it would best be used for you if you played with a team not just solo because you want as much damage as possible while solo. The next tree is SNTNl which is a small sentinel robot that you deploy: it flies around doing cryo and grenade damage mostly to your enemies. The final branch is the digi-clone: when you use it you drop a clone that attacks your enemies, you can also use the ability key again to replace your current self with the old clone to basically reset the clone and increase damage under certain skills.

Moze the gunner is a heavy weapons and demolition soldier, all of her branches are a little different from the others so instead of having completely different abilities it has different guns on her mech suit . Her first tree branch is shield of retribution which is a railgun that does high velocity shock damage. The second tree is demolition woman which adds a V-35 grenade launcher which is a high damage weapon for the mech. The final tree is called bottomless mags which adds a minigun with high fire rate lowish damage and it can overheat if used for too long.

The final character is FL4K “BeastMaster” who has the ability to summon a pet that will tear the enemy up. The first tree is Hunter or rack attack which summons two rakks which are a flying enemy typically to dive bomb your enemies. The second tree called master will summon a skag pet that will rip your bandit counterparts to shreds. Finally stalker which brings forth a jabber sidekick that will mess up your enemies.

The ending of BL3 is seen as a good wrap up for the majority of the series so far, as well as many in game lore items that explain a lot of the unknowns of the series. With a new successful onset of classes with several different entertaining playstyles, the game fluidy combines mobility with gunplay leading to an action packed experience. It also includes innovative fresh ideas which bring a new entertaining light to Borderlands. We would highly recommend this game with our overall rating being a solid 8.75/10.