Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Review (Oatmeal)
I honestly wanted to give this game a negative recommendation after I finished the main story last year. I've since reloaded my save and played the post-game and I had a few realizations that swayed my opinion.
Let me get this out of the way: the main story content is awful. It's cheesy, cringey, and too childish in a lot of places. The idea in its core is cool and unique, and the antagonist is great. But the execution and especially writing could be so much better. The side quests are not much of an improvement, with most of them being either forgettable or similarly cheesy.
The dice system is a good idea on paper, and they're fun to collect. My main issue with it is that the dice themselves are so unrewarding once you do get them. You can get an amazing roll and still only get a blue. Matter of fact, the loot in this game is awful when compared to BL2's and especially BL3's. You're literally 80% of your way through the game and you still get whites and greens. Item management is also a nightmare, with it being harder then ever to determine which loot is better than the other.
I do also have some minor issues, like a lot of the bosses being either too easy (the cthulhu boss) or one-shotting you out of nowhere (the ice skeleton boss). I also wish the game pushed its fantasy theme more rather than just being another Borderlands game but with spells as grenades.
What changed my mind with the game are a few things. Once you get near the end, you do get hooked into the story and it ends in a somewhat satisfactory way. You also start to get purples regularly as you reach the end, which are fun to use and essentially "activate" your build. Speaking of which, the skill trees and character building in this game is just as good if not better than BL3's. I did also have fun with the spells, even if you do end up trashing 99% of them. The Chaos Chambers are also really fun. In fact, this is the first time that I actually wanted to engage with a Borderlands game's end-game content.
I do wish that the game received a few more patches before it was abandoned. It's a good but flawed experience.