More role-playing, more humour and a really long campaign: Tiny Tina’s Wonderland does a lot right and will still cause discussion.
About nine years ago, Tiny Tina’s Storming of the Dragon Fortress was not only the best DLC for Borderlands 2, but also the most fun expansion among the countless add-ons of the entire Borderlands series to date.
After this little masterpiece was released again last year as a standalone adventure, it is now followed by Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a proper story shooter lasting around 25 hours, which revisits the idea around a tabletop round led by series favourite Tiny Tina.
But can the excursion into the D&D world ignite again? Or is the Borderlands series slowly running out of steam in its fifth installment? We’ll find out for you in our test.
Table of Contents
The adventure begins
Instead of playing a pre-set exterminator and saving the universe from a nasty supervillain, Wonderlands takes us into a round of the tabletop role-playing game Bunkers & Badasses – the Borderlands version of Dungeons & Dragons, so to speak.
Of course, Tiny Tina once again serves as the campaign’s game master, while we are provided with two charming companions in the form of the stubborn Captain Valentine and the rule-obsessed robot lady Frette. Although they are not allowed to take part in the game themselves due to a small dispute with Tina, they diligently comment and discuss with us, which makes for many funny moments.
Before we set off on our journey into the Wonderlands, we first have to create a character in keeping with the theme – a novelty in the Borderlands series.
In addition to visual adjustments such as hairstyles and make-up, the choice of class is also on the agenda here.
And these classes thankfully turn out to be quite varied: The Brrr Serker, for example, specialises in frost damage and melee attacks, while the Spore Keeper prefers to attack from a distance, while his Mushroom Companion attracts the attention of enemies. While in Borderlands 3 each class had two skill trees, in Wonderlands they only have one. But you can choose a secondary class later in the game, which invites extensive experimentation.
Bunkers & Badasses
The introduction to the fantasy world could hardly be more clichéd: Tiny Tina sends us to the capital city of Prachthuf, which is under siege by the skeleton servants of the nasty necromancer Dragon Lord. Once we have dealt with the threat, we then go to a graveyard to retrieve an extremely powerful relic, the Soul Sword, from a crypt. That sounds pretty unspectacular at first.
But fortunately Tina shows great ingenuity and more than a touch of madness when she leads us through her imaginary story: Again and again she presents us with wacky characters such as the Queen of the Wonderlands: a horse made of diamonds that goes by the name of Arschgaul. Unfortunately, an assassination attempt by the chief villain literally shortens her head, so that our new goal is to travel across the sea to his necropolis and put an end to him.
For spoiler reasons, we don’t want to reveal too much of the story at this point. But this much can be said: The story itself is only moderately exciting, but it is much funnier and better written than in Borderlands 3.
In addition, thanks to his smug monologues, the Dragon Lord comes across as much more charismatic than the incredibly annoying Calypso twins. But even he can’t hold a candle to Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2.
And even if the story doesn’t really sparkle for our taste, there are some moments of scenic brilliance in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Especially when the game master unexpectedly intervenes in the action.
When we enter the area of Rotting Mould, we initially find ourselves in a fairly average forest. As this is not musty enough for our fellow player Valentine, Tina simply lets all the trees die on it and creates a swamp overgrown with huge mushrooms.
These situations, in which Tina reacts to the discussion with your fellow players and spontaneously changes the game world, are always real highlights due to the wittily written dialogue and the excellent performances of all the dubbing actors and actresses.
Story characters can suddenly die of spontaneous combustion or enemies appear who are simply called Um, Um or Hmm. These are just things that happen when the game management is a little overwhelmed in a heated moment.
Another highlight is the many optional side tasks: Although these have nothing to do with the course of the main story, they always tell great stories. These are sometimes funny, sometimes touching, but always wonderfully wacky.
Early in the game, for example, we help a peasant woman who has fallen in love with a vain alchemist. But the alchemist won’t get involved with the poor farmer until pigs learn to fly, water flows uphill or a dotted, poetic leprechaun sings her a love song. So we get her one – in probably the dorkiest way imaginable.
No gameplay experiments
In order to complete all these quests in Wonderlands, you will of course have to fight, fight and fight again. And as creative as the developers are when it comes to storytelling, they prefer to stick to the tried and tested when it comes to gameplay.
Wonderlands plays almost exactly like Borderlands 3, which is not a bad thing, after all, the Borderlands formula has proven itself time and again over the years. Nevertheless, for a series veteran, the battles feel as if you’ve seen them a thousand times before.
The new spells don’t change that: they replace the grenades and are wonderfully staged for effect. We have icicles shooting out of the ground, meteors raining down from the sky and ball lightning jumping back and forth between enemies.
Not only does it look cool, with the right character build they can also cause a lot of destruction. However, the grenades could do that just as well.
The same picture emerges with the weapons: Although they have been partially adapted to the new fantasy setting, they play more or less the same as in Borderlands 3. Some pistols now look like hand crossbows and shoot small bolts, but this doesn’t change anything in terms of gameplay.
The melee weapons also only sound like a relevant innovation in theory. In practice, swords, axes and the like only appear briefly when the familiar slam button is pressed. Anyone hoping for a real melee combat system in the style of Dying Light 2 will be bitterly disappointed.
Loot and items are once again very varied, as is typical for the series, and there is no shortage of creative ideas: one of the funniest weapons we found was a frying pan obviously inspired by PUBG: Battlegrounds. As long as we don’t hit with it, we get 90 percent less damage from shots in the back. Not only a funny allusion, but also quite useful.
The same applies to the enemies: although the standard skeleton enemies are a little too omnipresent for our taste, there are at least as many funny ideas to make up for it. Sharks with legs, burrowing giant crabs and, of course, heaps of typical fantasy beasts like goblins, naga, goblins and trolls.
Some enemies, however, are merely reskins of enemy types we already know from other parts of the series. The cyclops, for example, have a large eye for a head and go into rage mode when we shoot it away – just like the Goliaths from Borderlands 2 and 3.
Underground Overworld
The new overworld also fits the setting: This represents the game board of the tabletop round and we travel around here with our character in a kind of iso-perspective between the different areas.
This overworld has a funny design throughout, with cubes and food scraps lying around everywhere. When a peanut flip that has fallen on the board blocks our way, Tina quickly claims that this is a meteor that can only be removed with a magic key. Situation comedy at its best!
In terms of gameplay, however, the overworld doesn’t offer much added value: to get the aforementioned peanut flip key, for example, we have to go into a cave and complete a procedurally generated arena battle, at the end of which we get to fish the thing out of a reward chest.
This is a pattern that unfortunately runs through all the overworld quests: Every quest requires us to complete mindless arena battles in which we simply have to shoot down random enemies. This is not only rather monotonous in the long run, but also unnecessarily protracted due to the slow spawning enemies.
There are indeed some little things to discover and unlock on the overworld, such as the shrines that give us small passive bonuses. But where do you find the fragments to put them together? That’s right, in the crates at the end of more arena battles. It doesn’t make it any better that when you cross tall grass – Pokémon says hello – more random arena fights can occur. Quite the opposite.
For whom is Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands worthwhile?
In the end, it only remains for us to say that despite our criticisms, we had a blast with Tiny Tina and her crazy ideas. The story itself is not outstanding, but it is told with so much wit and charm that it kept us entertained all the way to the end.
In terms of gameplay, the spin-off remains extremely close to the previous installments in the series, but this is not a negative point per se. Gunplay and shooter mechanics do seem a little worn out with the fifth shooter in the Borderlands universe, as we continue to shoot rather bluntly at bulletsponge enemies that lack real hit feedback.
However, effective spells, explosions and the ubiquitous damage numbers still make the battles feel like a real action-fest.
However, it is questionable how long the game can captivate after the completion of the really entertaining campaign. The new endgame mode Chaos Chamber promises a lot of motivating loot, but is made up of – you guessed it – a series of randomly generated battles.
With Wonderlands, series veterans get a really fun new adventure in the Borderlands universe, which is also not stingy with fanservice in the form of cameo appearances by popular characters such as Claptrap or Mr. Torgue.
So if you’re in the mood for crazy storytelling and the typical wacky humour and like the now somewhat routine Borderlands formula of looting and shooting, you definitely won’t regret buying it. However, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether what’s on offer is worth 60 euros, because all in all, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands feels more like an (undoubtedly extensive and high-quality) add-on for Borderlands 3 than a fully-fledged new part of the series.
Editor’s Verdict
Being both a shooter fan and an avid action RPG player, the Borderlands series has been especially close to my heart since the first installment in the series. Nowhere else do I get such a successful mix of great humour, memorable characters, motivating loot spiral and rock solid shooter gameplay.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is only a spin-off, but I personally like it much better than Borderlands 3, whose plot annoyed me immensely. I still haven’t forgiven Gearbox for the way they treated Maya – my character from Borderlands 2.
But will I be able to bring myself to grind for hours for the optimal equipment in Wonderlands? I’m a little curious to see what wacky weapons and spells the developers have hidden in the game. But if I really have to play the lame Chaos Chamber mode for the best chances, I’d rather wait until the already announced DLCs.
In general, Tiny Tina’s pricing policy remains a matter of taste. I can understand everyone who thinks 60 euros for a spinoff is too much. On the other hand, very few full-price shooters deliver a 25-hour-long and almost continuously entertaining campaign.
