Battleborn Beta review. Will it be good?
With the full release of Gearbox's new and highly anticipated game Battleborn, I thought I would finally get around to writing a review of what was shown in the open beta, as well as things I didn't like and hope will change in the full game, and things I did like. As always any comments I make about this game are my own personal opinions but am more then happy to hear your thoughts about the bea and your wishes for the full game.
Not much is fully explained in the beta, such as where the game is going to take place or the real reason why players are having to fight off this horde of nearly never ending demon-like monsters. What is known though is that there will be a almost episodic like way of story telling, as well as backstory given inside the missions themselves, but more on that later.
One thing players should know coming into the game is that (as far as we know) every character you can play as, can be unlocked in one of two ways, either by leveling up your profile rank or by finishing challenges that very from doing "X amount of missions as a certain race" or by finishing missions with different ratings. Speaking of characters, there are plenty to suite nearly every player's play-style. Gearbox has been able to take classic roles such as healer, tank, dps and support, and managed to make them better by making them playable for everyone by making it easy for players to use them all. But still keep in mind that the roles still play a huge part in the gameplay. Tanks are able to take tons of damage, but are able to dish out just as much, healers can go from single heals to full team aoe heals but are still able to deal out plenty of damage to hold their own in a fight, guardians/buffers are able to toss out shields to protect friends and deal out debuffs/status effects to mobs, and the dps characters are the classic glass cannons, dealing out high amounts of quick dmg, but un able to take much in return.
Speaking of classes, the types of characters in Battleborn are not your run of the mill fps characters. Yes you still have your classic gunslingers and commando types, but there are also many others that feel new and fresh to this type of game and they all fall in perfectly with Gearbox's Borderlands style of gameplay. For example you have Thorne who uses a bow that fires off poison arrows that can bounce off walls, the Battleborn version of a gundam mech, a penguin inside of power armor, a flying robot head, mages that can fire death from their hands or even summon a mini sun to heal and deal damage, a three style swordsman, and even some that just go full on wrestler and jump into the battle punching everything in sight. With this many different styles of play it will be very fun for players to explore all the different types and skills, which there are plenty of skills to choose from. Each character can level up ten times in a mission, each level lets you pick one of 2 (three as you gain out of mission levels) skills, giving players over 7000 different combinations, which makes it very hard for any 2 to have the same build.
Characters aside, it's the mission dialog where the game shines. During the beta there were only 2 missions open, but the inner dialog between the ai and the characters was some of the best moments I've had since the Borderlands series and each time the npc chatter was almost always different then before, mix that with the different characters picked for each mission, the interaction just gets better and better, I was actively looking forward to hearing the next chat just to see what would be said. The missions themselves were pretty straight forward, one was a raid mission while the other was an escort mission. Now before you shake your head and bring out the pitchforks, hear me out. The escort missions was actually almost better then the raid, "How???" you may be asking, it's simple, it could fight back. The missions revolves around walking with a giant talking tank named Wolf, by activating his skills he could do things such as firing missiles, opening a giant shield and even healing players. The raid mission was pretty straight forward, fight things, kill the mini bosses, fight more things, kill the big boss, and by my surprise each boss actually took some planning... namely one... While it's unknown what missions will be open in the full game, if they are anything like the two we got in the beta, then it will be a game worth getting.
Now for the other half of Battleborn, the pvp moba style gameplay. The pvp in the beta was primarily just a 2 lane first person moba, with both sides having to help their minions reach the other's goals while killing each other. How this differs from other mobas is that players are able to get extra big minions by spending crystal shards to upgrade them, as well as being able to build different type of turrets, namely the shooting kind and the healing kind, while also being able to take over the other side's turrets. I'll be honest, I only played a few pvp matches just to get an idea about how it is.
One of the other aspects to the game is that by doing story missions and pvp matches, players gain xp to raise their command level, raising this level unlocks different things, such as new characters and item packs to buy in the in game shop, which you can buy all the packs with in-game money and not have to spend actual cash (good job there guys) While inside the commend center players are also able to see which characters they have unlocked, their different skins and taunts, and are able to create gear builds to use in both pvp and story modes. Gear in the game is unlocked in one of two ways, by doing missions which give out loot and by buying look packs, with each pack scaled by the classic rarity color system, White (common) green (uncommon) blue (rare) purple (epic). Aside from the rarity packs there are also faction based loot packs, with each pack being able to hold a costume or taunt inside with any loot.
Now for the things I liked, because I like having lists in everything...
1. Character personality and playstyle: One thing I loved most about the beta was how each character's playstyle matched who they were. Rath has this imposing "I'm better then everyone else" personality that is complimented by how he works in combat by fighting with 3 katanas and being able to quick move from one fight to the next without losing any momentum. Long story short, each character plays accordingly to how they act.
2. Interactions with the npcs: Like i said before, I loved waiting to hear the next set of dialogue between everyone, from the enemy boss being pissed off by his spider robot named Geoff, but only answers to Arachnis, to the tank named Wolf that instantly becomes best friends with the players by just being a big softy.
3. Each character not just being their role: One of the biggest shocks to me was how each character had a fair chance to shine, it didn't matter if you were a tank, dps, healer, support, each one was able to be at the top of the list in kills, in fact in a good number of missions it was the healer that got the most kills and by a large gap mind you, this was during times when it would be a perfectly balanced team.
4. The over all feel: One of the best things was the over all feel of the game, it didn't feel like another Borderlands game and didn't have the super dark tones that most fps games generally have. From the characters voices to the sounds of the world around, it just all fit perfectly into this little world Gearbox has created.
Now the things I didn't like.
1: The difficulty spikes. In the missions, the game could go from overly each to hair ripping hard in a split second, which in some games I don't mind, but when getting to a mini boss is harder then actually fighting the boss, something is a little wrong. What was worse is that the final raid boss was overly too easy, with the 2nd boss being much harder then him. Mini bosses should not be harder then final bosses.
2. Extra challenges: During the game mini missions would pop up that would range from easy to nearly impossible. The more impossible ones being the ones that require you to kill X amount of things, but they didn't even start spawning until only a few seconds were left. It's a small things, but still annoying.
3. Not sure what you can and can't hurt: This mainly goes to one part of the raid, near the end a boss would spawn minions that you have to kill in order to make him come back out, the only problem was that most of the time no attacks would hurt them, even the special ones, and a few rare times they would hit. It makes it really annoying trying to kill something that can't be hurt. Again, it's another small thing, but could be an issue in the full game.
4. The costume skins: I know it was just the beta, but I hope that the skins aren't the same ones in the full game. The beta's skins were mainly full color swaps with little to no extra colors added in. Some would go from a mix of different colors to a full blue skin or purple with no little dashes of color to make anything stand out. They made the characters feel dull compared to the base skins, only exceptions are the skins unlocked in the faction packs, those actually had more detail in them. Once again I know it's not that much of a big deal, but if it is like that in the main game it would bring the player's personal touch down and also give off that "lazy mk2 pallet swap" feel.
Well there's my little quick review of the Battleborn beta, tell me what you thought about the beta and what you hope to see in the full game. And don't forget that Battleborn comes out Tuesday, May 3rd for Ps4, Xbox one, and pc.
