Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, the Borderlands 2 expansion that doubled as a loving parody of Dungeons & Dragons, came out in 2013. That was a year before fifth edition revitalized interest in Dungeons & Dragons, two years before Critical Role premiered. At the time, jokes about Dungeons & Dragons seemed pretty niche.
It was a surprising move for a shooter expansion, but it sure did pay off, hitting an untapped vein and quickly becoming everyone’s favorite DLC. In 2022, though? D&D is popular as it’s ever been, approaching cultural oversaturation, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands returns to a well that’s close to running dry.
While it looks like a bouncy fantasycomedy, it plays like Borderlands. Specifically, Borderlands 3. Some of the guns shoot crossbow bolts and the grenades have been replaced by spells, but momentto-moment it’s typical Borderlands—you shoot hordes of bad guys who repeat pithy one-liners, then compare loot to see if the new guns and shields are better than the old ones, and then do it again.
Being a game, I’m obliged by law to tell you about the best guns its randomized loot pool spat out for me. A sniper rifle that fired sawblades, each of which did higher damage the more sawblades were already in a target, was a highlight. The Tediore guns that don’t need to be reloaded—instead transforming into throwable explosives then teleporting a fully loaded replacement into your empty hands—have returned, and I got one that didn’t become an explosive, but instead became a laser pixie that harassed bad guys. Another summoned hydra heads that vomited poison.
