Borderlands 3

First things first, if you want to enjoy this game turn dialogue volume to 0. It sounds like a joke but it's not. Treat this like BL1, story doesn't matter, go here for the gameplay and the atmosphere, anytime a cutscene pops up skip it.
Honestly that is a damn shame.
I really like the guns, I'm looking at the character classes and they've went from "+5% max shield per level" to actual talent trees with consistent builds. I like the gameplay the guns feel fun, most of them feel unique. The gameplay team knocked it out of the park.
The enemies are fun, the guns are fun, the world looks great, the guns look great, I mean perfect game right?
No. This has been beaten to death but the story is abysmal, just abysmal. It gets a 8/10 for the concept and a 3/10 for execution. This is the most "how do you do fellow kids" story ever written. Which even the height of writing in the series BL2 was pretty cringe, but the brilliance, what elevated the story was the nuance to the characters.
Handsome Jack was utterly irredeemable in BL2, but he thought he was the hero in his own story. Which made him a fun villain, he stood out.
When one of the main characters dies nobody makes a quip about it, the game deliberately stops the pacing to let it sink in, there is an entire BL2 DLC about her dealing with his death.
BL2's story was joking at you so you'd let your guard down, and then it would take a swing at you with the story. BL3's story is just joking at you as if that was the only part of BL2's story that people liked. If the story had that same one two punch as before, that same kinda cringy charm to it quenched by serious moments, this would be a 10 out of 10 game. As it stands, don't pay full price, ignore the story, play this as a looter shooter with good graphics and an atmosphere.
Edit: Friends, I have made a grave mistake. For one side mission I turned on dialogue volume and listened to the dialogue for "proof of wife". Do you know what the game's writing tried to do?
The game's writing tried to justify why it's okay to kill bandits. In Borderlands. For those of you who've played a borderlands game, I don't need to explain the insanity of that.
For those of you that haven't, see the icon for the game with the guy with the face mask? That's a bandit, in Borderlands playing through the games you will kill thousands of them, if you play all the games you might reach a five digit kill count for them. The game is written for people who think that four games into the franchise that isn't justified with how the bandits have been characterized.
For your own sake ignore the story in this game. The gameplay holds up.

In my opinion, this is the most disappointing entry in a great series. Overall it is a good game with fun gameplay, but it can be very frustrating because the story is a nuclear level of cringe and a lot of game mechanics are really awful. I am a huge fan of this series and have waited years to play it and it is still a non-optimised mess with bugs and poor balance. If you like looter shooters and want to check it out, wait for a very big discount, get some mates and turn off the dialogue volume.
Pros:
- Great gunplay;
- Wonderful location design;
- Awesome art style and visuals;
- Good customisation;
- Great arsenal;
- Replayability;
- Great voice acting;
- Awesome loot system;
- Decent DLCs;
- Good controls;
- Awesome sound design and soundtrack;
- Diverse enemies;
- Fun co-op;
Cons:
- Eye-rolling writing;
- Legendary drop rate is too high, which devalues them and makes getting one much less exciting;
- Cringe-worthy and boring villains;
- Bad boss fights;
- Obnoxious one-note characters;
- Awful UI design;
- Terrible optimisation;
- Boring endgame;
- Outdated quest design;
- Game is way too easy even on the hardest mode;
- Poor legendary gear balance;
- A lot of unnecessary and unwanted retcons;
- Overwhelming visual effects;

If I skip all the dialogue then the game is actually kinda fun. The main story is absolute dog shit. I have no idea how we went from Handsome Jack, one of my favorite villians in gaming, to whatever the hell this game offers. The gameplay and some of the mechanics are pretty fun/good. Got the ultimate edition of this game for a very steep discount which is the only reason I own the game. I would never pay full price for something like this when I have Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel.

The characters are all super unlikeable, the writing is cringe, and the story is... Well it's okay. It's the standard "get to the vault before the other guys do" Borderlands story-line, only they managed to up the ante and the stakes, which in some ways I do think they did pretty well, especially now after playing Tales From the Borderlands.
Where this game lacks in story, it more than makes up for in gameplay. It can get a bit too easy near the end, with the gun progression being much more exponential than the difficulty progression as the story went along. There are ways to make it difficult again, though, like buffs you can give the enemies as well as multiple difficulty options (though i wouldn't recommend turning all of them on on a first or even second playthrough because they can be way too difficult to be worth the loot).
Overall if you're looking for another dumb fun addition to the Borderlands series with some cool guns, environments, and level designs, this game is pretty great. While I didn't like any of the characters at all (the protagonists included), the other aspects of the game were strong enough for me to stick around and then play more. The game also has an arena feature (I forgot its exact name) where you can recieve extra loot as well for surviving in a shrinking map (kind of like a battle royale against bots type deal, but with a boss at the end). I do wish this mode had more maps, or more to really do in it, but it is still highly entertaining and consistently engaging.
Overall while I think a lot of the wit is gone in this entry to the series, the charm and fun are still there.

They figured out how to make the shooty shooty bang bang very fun.

However, that was at the cost of making every single character a hollow husk of what once was, the addition of the single most annoying character I've ever had the misfortune of hearing, and writing that came straight from slop central. Your neurons will rot with every second you listen to the dialogue.

If you find out some way to mute everyone speaking, you will have a great time.

Fun game, villains suck and feel like a gen z tick tocker version of handsome jack but the gameplay is much smoother then previous entries and its loads of fun so that makes up for it, get it if its on sale. 8/10 also always tip Moxxxi

Set voice volume to 0% and turn off subtitles for the ideal experience