*slow clap* Well done Gearbox. Well fucking done.
SPOILERS SMELL LIKE DEAD PEOPLE AND BUTTS.
346 hours later, I've pretty much completed Borderlands 2. Including the newest DLC that came out Tuesday: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep.
What is Assault on Dragon Keep? Easily the best DLC to come out for Borderlands 2 across the board. Let me explain. No there is too much, let me sum up.
TTADK (abbreviations!) takes place after the main storyline of Borderlands 2 (rather than concurrent as with the other DLCs). Roland is still dead and the other vault hunters (including the originals from Borderlands) are currently beating the hell out of a Hyperion Spy to get information from him. Tina asks her friends to play a game with her, the ever popular Bunkers and Badasses. Think Dungeons and Dragons but on Pandora. That's right folks. We're playing classic fantasy tropes, with guns, explosions, and that tongue in cheek style Borderlands does so well.
We've got a complete redesign of machines (stained glass fronts), all your favorite characters are there (but medieval'ed out) and your entire quest is to save the Queen from the Handsome Sorcerer and bring light back to the world. Chests now have 20 sided dice and there's a shotgun that shoots swords. Not to mention awesome looking scenery/forests. Even the music is done in that classic fantasy game style, upbeat and festive in town, dark and brooding in dungeons. Skeletons, silly English K-niggits, Dwarves, Dragons..if you've fought it in a fantasy game before, odds are they come up here eventually.
Yes we know Oz, Borderlands has the style down, but what makes this any better than the other 3 DLCs?
1. The storyline actually has impact here. In Scarletts, Torgue's, and Hammerlock's the story was more of a sidenote to see the new areas and enemies. The story is the heart here. The ending cutscene actually brings the entire game together eliciting more emotion than you'd think from a game that constantly makes fart jokes. I'm doing my damnedest to not spoil it here, you need to play this DLC if you at all care about the story line.
2. The difficulty is reasonable. Rather than being a buttfucking like Hammerlocks, or a cakewalk like Torgue's, TTADK offers a challenge, yet not an impossibility. I played it on Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode and while I died my fair share, I was never so frustrated I rage quitted. Sure there's things to piss you off, but you can actually work around it and find different methods to take care of it.
3. Humor/Allusions take the cake here. The writers at Gearbox wanted to make sure everyones favorite fantasy series were represented here and most of the quests are references to other media, often cited by the game with a dialogue of "This all seems vaguely familiar." They know damn well its fan service and freely admit it. My personal favorite? You get to slap the shit out of "Jeffrey". Repeatedly. It's actually a quest objective to keep smacking him. He's even sitting on the Iron Throne.
4. It's damn fucking fun. Solo or with a buddy. I played probably about 3/4 of the DLC alone and was enjoying it immensely. When I caught up to my buddy, he jumped in my game..and it just escalated. There's just something satisfying about you and a friend taking down endless hordes of undead gladiators and archers.
My only beefs with this DLC were explosive ammo worked on literally everything it threw at me (seriously, I used the same gun for the entirety with no issue, including the final boss), the gear wasn't really any better than anything we already had (although we haven't done raid bosses yet) and as usual the story bosses were a bit easy (although a long one this time).
Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep is worth the 10 bucks if you play Borderlands and haven't already gotten the season pass. Its beautifully executed and is what DLC should be. This is worth handing over extra money for. If you own it and haven't played it yet, put your other games on hold and go sink the 6-7 hours into this. You won't be sorry.
-Oz
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