Jolly Cooperation - Borderlands 3 (7)

Hello everyone and welcome back to another chapter of Jolly Cooperation featuring, Borderland 3. Two chapters ago, we talked about Borderlands 3's first major DLC, Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, and my overall positive impressions of it. Shortly after completing that story campaign, we then moved on to the second major DLC for the game, Guns, Love and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock. Phew, that is quite a mouthful to say, much less typing it. As such, we are going to refer to it as just DLC 2 moving forward.

As the name of the title suggests, the new campaign revolves around the marriage of two of Borderlands 3's longstanding recurring characters, Sir Alistair Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs. Together with the new story, there are also a host of other characters involved in the couple's wedding ceremony. A familiar face from Borderlands 2, Gaige the Mechromancer, also makes a return in this DLC as the wedding planner for Hammerlock & Wainwright. Aside from her, there are also a host of new characters such as Mancubus Bloodtooth, the proprietor of The Lodge and Eista, a hunt-oriented mission provider taking the place of Hammerlock's usual hunt quests.

Aside from the new characters and story, this DLC also takes place on the new frozen planet of Xylourgos. Unlike Moxxi's Jackpot which largely took place indoors, this second outing features more of Borderland's traditional open air maps with long viewing distances and epic natural formations. From the frozen tundras to the eerie almost haunted towns, the setting was certainly one of DLC 2's standout features. Together with the new locales, there is also the introduction of a new semi-hub area known as The Lodge where players are able to resupply, change cosmetics, collect lost loot, gamble amongst other things.

Coupled with the scenic environments, there are also several new monsters and enemies befitting of these new environments. The frozen outdoors were populated with wildlife such as the Wolven and Krich together with a new band of bandits known as the Frostbiters. Meanwhile, indoor environements were populated by cult-like enemies known as the Bonded. While the human-type enemies were largely forgettable, the new designs for the Wolven and Krich certainly did stand out as something different when you first encountered them.

Despite the new enemy types, there is no significant bump in difficulty nor is there any added degree of challenge when facing them. As with most of the enemies in the base game, the solution is to simply pour enough bullets into the enemy until they stopped moving. My entire playthrough was done on Mayhem 10 with the first half being capped at Level 60 and the latter half at the new level cap of 65. For players who are used to enemies from the Circle of Slaughter or Takedowns, these should be relatively easy to breeze through.

Where the new setting and environments certainly did not fail to impress, I felt less so when it came to the story portion of this new campaign. It was not so much the content of the story rather, the delivery and flow of it which felt a little lackluster especially when compared to the explosive campaign of Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot that came before it. Where the heist literally lived up to its name by incorporating elements of heist-themed films and media, the campaign for Guns, Love & Tentacles felt rather two-dimensional. Most of the objectives ranged from simple point A to point B while killing everything in between or collection quests. The cut scenes did little to inspire the urgency of matters at hand nor was the conviction of the antagonists clearly fleshed out.

If there was one saving grace to the entire campaign, it would certainly be the re-introduction of Gaige. Her standout performance alone carries the weight of the first third of the campaign while her treasure hunt-esque side quest, Gaige's Gifts, sheds likes on the guests missing from the wedding. Gaige's voice actress does an excellent job of impersonating the other members of the Borderlands cast when reading out the letters attached to these gifts that you find. It is a pity there were not more of it with some notable cast members being left out such as, Moxxi.

Of course it would not be a Borderlands game without more new loot. From guns and gears to unique and legendaries, this DLC packs a whole create of drops to farm. Stand out rewards from this DLC include the Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge which is given as part of a side quest reward. This Legendary Artifact is a cornerstone of many Zane and Fl4k builds who hinge on the increased weapon damage that the artifact provides. Since I am still very much a Deathless (artifact) user, I had my focus on trying out the various other legendary guns instead. The one which stood out to me the most was the Oldridian, a legendary Hyperion SMG with a high damage output and random elemental damage type upon each reload.

Primarily a Moze player, I would normally rely on Iron Bear's Auto Bear ability for the bulk of my damage output. But with an "Action Skill Active" anointment, I was able to hold my ground fairly well against Level 65 Mayhem 10 enemies fairly well. Something that I had not been able to do reliably ever since we transitioned to playing with Mayhem difficulty modifiers. And as the game's campaign began to ramp up, it quickly came to its conclusion with a rather unmemorable and unremarkable final boss battle.

To sum it up, Borderlands 3's second outing with its major DLC does certainly fall flat when compared to its initial outing. Whether or not this is as a result of the first outing simply proving to outdo itself is certainly up for debate. While the environments and Gaige's performance really stood out, the lukewarm campaign and unmemorable bosses and enemies did not help to bring the entire package together like I hoped it would have. I would only recommend this DLC as part of the season pass and not as a standalone purchase. With that, we come to the end of this chapter of Jolly Cooperation. The next chapter will in chronological order be covering the third DLC, Bounty of Blood. It will be sometime before that comes out as I have only just started playing that with the rest of the party. In the meantime, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section below. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!