Story
Taken from the Borderlands wiki:
“Taking place after the event of Roland's death, Tina and the first group of Vault Hunters decide to play a game of Bunkers and Badasses, Pandora's equivalent to the table top game "Dungeons & Dragons". Tina serves as the "Bunker Master" and narrator of the DLC, and changes the world in dynamic ways as the story progresses, such as altering the appearance of locations and adding characters and bosses.
The plot involves the new Vault Hunters playing characters within the campaign, each responding to Tina's narration in their own way. Their quest is to rescue to the queen from an evil sorcerer and restore peace and tranquility to the land.
The journey to Dragon Keep ultimately has Tina coming to terms with Roland's death and ends with a possible hint to the setting of future DLC.”
So much better than Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt’s story!!!!
Setting
Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep has a setting that’s about as unique as Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, maybe even more unique. For starters, there are hardly any textures from the main game used, apart from a couple character models & terrain/building parts. Everything that you see is completely brand new, and serve to convey the fantasy theme. You journey through typical, yet nice set-pieces. There’s Flamerock Refuge, the main hub of the expansion. There’s also a forest, a graveyard, a dwarven mine, and it all concludes onto of a wizard’s spire, surrounded by storms & dragons. Gearbox definitely hit it out of the park with this one!
Characters
Characters are interesting in this DLC. For starters, we have a fair majority of the cast from the main game return to this expansion (Ellie, Mad Moxxi, etc). They all have been given new skins to match the theme of the DLC, but their attitude & mannerisms have remained largely the same. The player characters themselves finally speak for the first time in this expansion. They each have their own set of lines, which are spoken when given a cue to do so. At one point, they break the fourth wall with Salvador, and he talks for a little bit.
Gameplay
Gameplay is a bit of a different creature in this DLC. While you still wander around & shoot things, the fantasy setting puts a spin on every quest you play. There’s a quest where you kill a golem to get Roland’s sword back, a quest where you decimate a village of orcs, and a quest where you charge up a magic wand. There’s also plenty of quests that lampoon pop culture, as well as praise the best elements. Some of these quests include reviving a player that gets killed by another player, storming into a Game of Thrones parody, and trying to pick up a gun from Moxxi (And failing almost every single time). Overall, doing every quest in the expansion was fun........except for one.
Called “Fake Geek Guy”, this side-quest is found early on in the expansion. After Mr. Torgue is found in the stocks, he asks if he can join the group and play. Lilith takes serious offense at this, citing that he’s a “Big muscle-bound guy that takes care of his body”, and calls out his geek cred. After Tiny Tiny tells you to find the “3 Questions Of True Geekiness”, you search for these questions, and Mr. Torgue attempts to answer them. This quest mirror’s the real life “Fake Geek Girl” controversy, and I get the tone they’re trying to create with this quest, but here’s my problem with it. Not every geeky guy thinks this way. More often than not, I’ve met many geeky guys that not only like girls that are geeks, but are glad that girls are becoming more geeky. As I always say: “If the passion is in your heart, they you’re already in”.
Vehicles don’t return in this DLC, but given the kinds of environments you travel through, I get why. Even then, it would have been cool to have a fantasy style mount, such as a horse or small dragon. Luckily, the fast-travel posts are still in this game, so you can quickly appear in each location. Speaking of new creatures.....
The enemies in Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep are completely brand new. All of them are fantasy themed, such as skeletons, wizards, and orcs. Every single enemy in this game bring a lot to the table, and also have their own new battle tactics (Wizards cast spells, Orcs tend to charge right in, and skeletons swing swords or shoot bows). You constantly have to change your weapon loadout for each encounter you come across, as no specific selection will work.
The Seraph Vendor & Seraph Guardian return for one last encounter. The Seraph Guardian this time around is actually a quarter of Dragons, each of which correspond with a different element & ability. This is by far the toughest of the guardians, and fighting them alone is an incredible challenge. However, the loot they drop is impressive, and the Seraph Crystals they drop can get you items such as this:
Loot in this DLC is heavily fantasy themed, much in the same way as loot from Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty was pirate themed. You’ve got a E-Tech shotgun from Torgue that shoots exploding swords (BTW, this is the only E-Tech gun that Torgue manufactures), a pistol that gets you drunk, and a smg that sometimes slips from your hands. I’ll say that, in this regard, Tiny Tina’s themed loot matches that of Captain Scarlett in terms of flavor.
Eridium’s usage has been expanded in Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. In Moxxi’s place within Flamerock Refuge are slot machines that take 2 pieces of Eridium per pull, but otherwise act the same as the normal slot machines. There are also special chests that have 2 d20 dice on top, and if you pay 5 Eridium, you can have both dice roll instead of one, and the higher number will determine the quality of loot within.
I should quickly point out that Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep is the longest of the DLCs. If you’ve forgotten how long the other DLCs were, here’s a quick list:
Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty: 8 to 10 hours
Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage: 8 hours (Maybe less)
Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt: 3 ½ hours
With that out of the way, this DLC lasts for 10 to 15 hours. Given how much content is in this expansion, it’s not surprising that it takes that amount of time. Hardcore fans of Borderlands 2 might be able to zoom through this in close to a day, but I managed to spread this expansion out over the course of 2 to 3 days.
This last point is a little more minor, but it doesn’t hurt to talk about. The vending machines this time around have become imbued with the essence of fantasy: Zed’s medical machine has become Zed’s Apothacary, Marcus Guns has become Marcus Cannons, etc. Not only that, the New-U posts now have fantasy themed lines they say when you’re resurrected. It’s a nice refresher, actually.
Graphics & Sound
While it uses the same engine as the main game, there’s not that many textures from the source material (Apart from a tiny few). Instead, this expansion uses many new textures, for the background/setting, as well as the enemies, and stays very close to the fantasy theme. There’s also a completely new soundtrack (The other DLCs reused certain songs from the main game), complete with tracks such as follows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IHIPEceP8list=PLrwWaT3GWAEfZhT_nzxytofd7SB9NssBM&index=51
Overall & Rating
Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep was a fun romp. The love of D&D, fantasy, and pop culture is very evident in everyplace, and everything. Anybody who’s geeky will definitely find something they know about in this expansion, and even casual geeks will at least be able to identify something small. If you have a love of fantasy & geeky things, then I highly suggest getting this expansion.
Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep gets a 8.5 out of 10.
See you all next time. Until then, stay Otaku!
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Sorry for posting this a little later than normal. I went to a party this past weekend, and I was still tired this morning. Also, my bad for not posting anything Breast Cancer Awareness related in my past couple posts. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find current videos for the subject. Luckily, I managed to find something. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsyE2rCW71o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5txBaPR-TM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF-UEUCJ60w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feCcW8__N94
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