Mini Review: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure (PS4) – Fantasy-Themed Shooting Still Rocks

Just like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, I consider Borderlands gaming junk food. They are fun games in their own right but are a complete waste of time as you don't get any lasting memories from these types of games. So I've retired playing these games until they do something drastically different, but each to their own 😎

Would this be a good grab for someone with lots of love for D&D, but no personal connection to Borderlands?

I picked it up since it's so cheap. I'm not sure when I will get around to playing it though.

I'll say it again:

DO NOT play this if you plan on, but have not yet played Borderlands 2. It acts as an epilogue to the base campaign and, as such, contains MASSIVE, MASSIVE spoilers. Even if you don't care about the story in Borderlands, I would still HIGHLY suggest not playing it if you haven't beaten BL2, as you'll be missing nearly all of the context for the narrative (and this dlc is VERY narrative heavy, far more than the base game).

Not only is it the single best piece of content in the entire Borderlands series, but it's one of the best pieces of dlc ever made, right up there with stuff like TW3's Blood and Wine, TLoU's Left Behind, RDR's Undead Nightmare, Bloodborne's The Old Hunters, Bioshock 2's Minerva's Den or Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea.

In fact, just like Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea dlc, Dragon Keep retroactively makes Borderlands 2 (one of my all time top 5 games BEFORE this dlc came out) infinitely better.

Borderlands knows how to hype their games for sure, before Borderlands 3 we got free Borderlands 2 DLC, and now we get free Standalone expansion for free (epic Games store anyway)

@GorosBat I mean to each their own but there's a reason why BL2's story is memorable to a lot of people and that's because of Handsome Jack who is one of the best villains ever made and it's still the best looter shooter compared to a lot of other titles after it. After that they made one of the best DLCs made and got to the point where it is getting its own standalone game(Which looks far better compared to BL3 now that was a ***** show).

Just got this for free on EGS. Maybe I'll even play it some day.

@GorosBat I got the platinum in 3 and have zero idea what the story is about lol

@BamBamBaklava89 Same, but the story is coherent, but it's just bland imo.

@Nepp67 I like the wit of the characters in BL2, but if you think handsome jack is one of the best villians in gaming you probably haven't experienced many good gaming stories, but each to their own. TBH I don't think there are many good villians in gaming, TLOU 2 is the only one I'd say is a standout, but by the end of that game I actually liked Abby more than Ellie after Naughty Dog butchered her character. But back on topic, my main problem with these games are the repetitive gameplay experience where you're literally just following objective markers and shooting. I've played BL 2 and 3 and all their DLC and ALOT of AC games and am completely burnt out on them so I'm not going to bye them anymore until their formulas have drastically changed. Have a good day 😎

@GorosBat Lol I'm not the only one who thinks Handsome Jack is one of the best villains ever made. That's one of the main reasons why a lot of fans wanted Borderlands 3 and that's cause of how good of a villain Handsome Jack was. I've played many good gaming stories Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, RDR 2, FF7R, Death Stranding, Sekiro, Far Cry 3, Persona 5 Royal, Witcher 3, I could keep going. Point is I can see Handsome Jack as one of the best villains made cause he does such a great job of making you want to hate him while also being such an enjoyable character. The Calypso twins on the other hand? I literally had to mute the audio cause of how cringeworthy the dialogue was for them.

Played and completed borderlands 1 and 3, but only the one play-through. Never thought they were great / epic games. As a FPS I never felt as though the shooting was that great.

Tried the prequel and didn’t gel with it. However, when I saw the trailer for wonderlands I was sold. I don’t like dungeons and dragons but add in machine guns and the randomness of Tina Tiny and i’m In!

Bought this glorified ‘demo’ on release date I’m enjoying it so far. I just find two things odd;

Firstly, the games not out till March, so why release this 4 months before? Surely it would make sense to release it in January or February.

Secondly, what took them so long to realise that the DLC was good enough to be a full game. It’s been what, 8 years? Again, shouldn’t they have made this game sooner? when the Borderlands 2 hype was huge?

@GorosBat Handsome Jack appears in quite a few "best villains" lists, more so than any TLOU villains.

And TT' Dragon Keep DLC is probably the most memorable BL moment. It's a 13 year old processing grief through the use of a D&D game. I think a lot of players may be able to relate to that.

Alongside 'The Citadel' for Mass Effect 3, this is perhaps the best DLC content ever released. And it's genuinely laugh out loud funny

@GeneJacket Thank you for heads-up, appreciated.

I don' think I can ever play Borderlands without VR again. The PSVR version with Aim controller was just an amazing experience!

Pretty sure I played this already. Once was enough, although their are some annoyingly funny dialogs and quests.

@Nepp67 I loathe the character of Tiny Tina, and think she's one of the worst aspects of the borderlands series. I also really don't think there's anything that great about Handsome Jack. Playing through B2, years ago with my cousin, we just found his whole thing totally irksome and annoying by the end of the game. So much so, that I grew tired with the humour of the series as a whole and didn't even bother playing the dlc that I'd bought. So really, I'm just saying that all this stuff is totally subjective, and while I am curious to give this a spin (now owning the handsome collection on ps4), because I think the gunplay and mechanics are totally sound, the characters really are not what draw me to the series.

Free on Epic games btw for those interested

I've been eyeing up the handsome collection we got on ps plus if anyone is down for a few goes?

I got quite far in BL1, put it down for some reason - I think my online and also unemployed att mates on the 360 ran too far ahead of me. Enjoyed it nonetheless. So yeah if anyone fancies running BL2 give me a shout/poke/friend request.

@GeneJacket Burial at Sea (both parts) is awful, and TLoU Left Behind, while good, is seriously overrated

@themcnoisy I got all the Borderlands games in the backlog... from what you remember of BL1 would I need to play that one first though?

@colonelkilgore The first game really just gives context and back story for the vaults, Pandora, and the Crimson Raiders.

You could start at BL2 if you really wanted. I wouldn't personally, but I enjoy the first game more than most.

@colonelkilgore I don't think so. It's a looter shooter not dissimilar to diablo for its loot. Destiny is a kind of 2nd cousin removed. Worth having a mooch one night in SP and then we can get together for an online game in a couple of weeks.

@themcnoisy okay cool, I might look to switch it in to be my December game in that case 👍

@colonelkilgore BL1 is pretty story-light, aside from the basic setup. Most of the actual narrative and world building were done in the dlcs. I love BL1, but you can jump into BL2 without missing anything of substance.

@ReddJelly Counterpoint: Burial at Sea is brilliant and I don't care about your opinion!

Honestly I liked the Dragon Keep DLC as part of Borderlands 2, but as a standalone product it sucks. The combat has not aged well and feels slow and the enemies are terrible to fight against. Each new map feels very big and very empty making exploring them a chore. I really feel that this DLC should have remained as such and not been released on its own. Seriously disappointed by this product.

@GeneJacket Firstly, you're on a public forum, idgaf if you're interested in my opinion or not, but you're gonna hear it.

Secondly, as a counter to your counter: Burial at Sea is a non-sensical mess that cheapens the lore of both the original game and Infinite itself. Part One is so linear it hurts, and Part Two is just desperately trying to rip off Dishonored.

@ReddJelly Oh, oh wait, hmmmmmmm...yeah, you know what, I was wrong! I totally care what you think now and your scathing rebuttal has completely reversed my opinion on the matter. That's just astounding work you've done here, you should be so very proud of yourself.

@GeneJacket Tbh I was hoping for a little more back and forth; maybe see if I could get Burial at Sea from another perspective. Perhaps get a decent reason for Suchong, always toted as being an absolute genius in the first two games, being revealed as nothing more than a dude copying someone else's work could actually improve the plot in any way.
Nevermind.

How does this run performance wise? Borderlands 2 was just 30fps I guess?

Wait... This is just Borderlands 2 DLC? I already have all of it in the VR version. Well this month of PS+ sucks for me, then.

"Borderlands formula blends will with D&D"

Small typo in there.

I've never played a game where the ai uses so many exploits to kill the player before.