Borderlands 3 Switch Review

The Borderlands series has seen a lot of success since its inception with Borderlands 1. There have been 3 mainline entries in the franchise, dozens of expansion packs, a Telltales spinoff, and a D&D-inspired romp. Borderlands 3 was only announced a short while ago, and it’s finally here, allowing Switch users to now experience all of the mainline entries. The short lead-up, lack of trailer until launch, and a seemingly 70 gig install size may have made many vault hunters cautious in buying this one, as well as a steep $90 price tag. So let’s gear up and head to Pandora, to hopefully clear some of these issues up.

Right off the bat let’s address the main concerns, the game is not 70 gig. The complete digital game will take up 23.5 gig on your Switch, and the Physical copy (where you need to download all DLCS free from the Eshop) will take up 15.8 gig. The graphics do look a bit washed out in docked mode (and all footage for this review is captured in docked mode) whereas handheld on the OLED looks significantly better due to the smaller screen. For my vision-impaired gamers, some environments use a brown/grey palette which may make it tricky to distinguish enemies, but there is a hit indicator that shows the general direction of fire, and targeted enemies are highlighted with a red outline. Aside from a longer initial load time, the in-game load times were standard for the Switch as well. I have my game installed on an SD card as well. The biggest hit, however, is the lack of 4 player co-op play, which is a staple for the series. Currently, the game supports 2 player online or local play which is a bit baffling. I’m not sure if this is due to system restrictions or not, but one of the main selling points of Borderlands is romping around Pandora with 4 friends causing absolute chaos. I’m hoping this can be added later on, but I’m unsure if it will be.

With those burning questions out of the way, let’s get stuck into the review!

For those new to Pandora, Borderlands 3 is an RPG Looter Shooter with offbeat humour, colourful characters, and guns… lots of guns. You can pick 1 of 4 classes in the shape of a character. There’s Moze, easily the most OP class, a gunner who can power up to bring a temporary mech into the battlefield, somewhat akin to D.Va from the Overwatch series. FL4K is a robotic beastmaster who favors long-distance combat while using a beast to aid you in combat. Zane, an operative who uses gadgets to assist on the battlefield like a combat drone and shoulder-mounted cannon like Predator. Last, but not least, the Siren class makes a return with Amara, who uses her psychic abilities to hold enemies in place, making her a great character for crowd control.

You step into the boots of one of these characters to find a vault, but this time there’s a bit of a twist as you will visit different planets on your journey. You will take on hordes of murderous bandits, corporate soldiers, deadly creatures, and entertaining bosses with unique mechanics. The strength of Borderlands 3 is that it never really lingers on one thing for too long, making objectives and enemy encounters frantic and fun. My one complaint would be that I would have loved to see more action when traversing these worlds, especially in the starting areas as there is little to do between locations. When you do get put into the heat of battle, however, combat is fluid and shooting is tight, creating exciting battles that also vary depending on your weapon of choice. At one stage, I had a gun which instead of reloading, you threw at enemies like a mini grenade, changing my combat style up to shoot a few rounds before attempting to hit enemies with the reload, conserving a few extra rounds. The variation of guns is certainly the game’s strong point with some having unique animations and sounds like the DJ Pistol, or some having unique fire, shock, or poison augments.

This is all enhanced but the game’s loot system with all weapons, shields, and grenade mods being able to be common, rare, epic, and legendary. It’s exciting to see even a green or blue item drop from an enemy during battle, and due to the nature of the loot system, you will be chopping and changing on the fly to experiment with new types of weapons and abilities. You also have skill points to assign under 3 different skill trees for each character, also creating a really great experimental type gameplay as well as adding replayability. Don’t fret if you change your mind on what skill tree you want to invest in either, as most checkpoints and forward operating bases have vending machines where you can re-spec your character to suit your style, as well as change appearance modifiers and buy essential health and ammo supplies.

The game still looks great and performance seems locked in at a smooth framerate. There are minor hitches when loading into some sections but nothing that impacts gameplay, and is mainly noticeable when traversing the open-world sections in a vehicle. The worlds you visit are well-detailed and varied and the art style is on point with previous entries that create a world of interesting characters, captivating (if somewhat annoying villains,) and millions of unique weapons to shoot as you smash your way through the campaign. Since this package is jammed with all the DLCs and some bonuses as well, there’s a lot of game to get through with the main campaign (not including side quests) will take around 40 hours, and the DLCs take roughly 6 hours each to tackle.

All of this is backed up with fantastic voice-acted characters that really bring them to life, as well as varied enemy banter, bosses taunting, and your character giving lip back to them all. It’s right on the sweet spot too, not being overly done and used just the right amount of times. Dialogue is mostly witty, and while the villains fail to hit the same heights as the previous villain, Handsome Jack, they still get under your skin in a good way, spurring you on in your mission to take them down. I did find some sound issues were present such as skags being overly loud compared to the rest of the game regardless of distance away from them, and my subtitles kept repeating a certain cutscene after it ended, but these were minor inconveniences that didn’t really take anything away from my experience.

I was going to skip Borderlands 3 initially due to the heavy lineup of titles this month, but the rumour mill and misinformation made me think checking it out would be a good idea. I’m very glad I did because there’s a lot of game, guns, and glory to be had with Borderlands 3. It’s a vibrant and unapologetic balls-to-the-wall shooter with sharp shooting and even sharper wits that’s entertaining in both story and gameplay. The price point stings worse than a Scorpion Rakk, but that pain is lessened by a complete package that performs well on the Switch. For people who are a fan of the series, then the game will be a great addition to the collection, but with limited multi-features, Borderlands 3 is a slightly less social experience on the Switch, and probably best suited for solo players on the go.

So What’s it Like?

Borderlands 3 is like a mix of Mad Max, and the Division.