Battleborn - Game Review

Developer: Gearbox
Publisher: 2k
Microtransactions: Yes
Version: PC
Supplied: purchased through Humble Bundle

Update 8/23/2016: I added a few bits having played it some more.
Update 9/14/2016: Cleaned up some grammar.

Battleborn is a game where a large group of wacky characters come together to tackle certain objectives in PvE or PvP environments. There are a lot of heroes from which to choose who all play in a variety of ways and fill varying roles. It's you and 4 others for PvE challenges and a 5v5 game in PvP; level up as you take out the baddies. The 3 game modes for PvP are Incursion, Meltdown, and Capture.

Battleborn seems like it is pretty easy to get into but that is a deception found out only too late. There are a lot of characters in the game and trying to figure out how to play one is challenging enough given how many different skill-up permutations are possible. It is definitely recommended for a newer player to start out in PvE to try out whichever character they like and learn the ropes there before moving to any kind of PvP. This also benefits newer players with lots of gear(more on that in a moment) to use in-game. You will also find out that you will unlock new characters far faster than you can learn to play them. The PvE missions are pretty straightforward and it's pretty hard to get lost. Plus, it is unlikely at this point to party up with people who have not done it before.

So, what is gear? You collect gear through missions and through booster packs given to you after you meet certain conditions. Gear varies wildly in what it can do: some boosts attack speed, cooldown reduction, damage bonus, etc. Not everything is positive, however, as some lucrative pieces might come with a downside. Also, the gear varies in rarity as well. The rarer it is the better but the cost to activate goes up as well. To use gear in-game one must collect shards littered around the maps(pretty easy to spot). Once activated it remains until the end of the match. It might seem better at first to use the best gear always, but they tend to cost a lot more and are therefore offline longer than if you were to use a more common piece with a possible downside.

Now to discuss the PvP. The Incursion mode is where you and your team are tasked with the elimination of the enemy tanks, of which there are 2. It exists in basically a labyrinthine hallway and you can activate turrets and other buildables around the map to aid in your team's defense/offense. Friendly minions also spawn and push towards the enemy. One thing that might go completely unnoticed is the super-minion-type enemies. You have to kill them(and they are kinda tough) then stand on the pad to resummon it under your team's influence. Next up is Meltdown where you have to feed minions into a grinder to rack up points. These maps seem like they are a bit more open than the Incursion maps but still feel a bit cramped at times. Most other things are the same too. Lastly, we have Capture, which if you have ever played Call of Duty and played Domination, it's the exact same thing. Very few minions spawn and buildables are hit and miss depending on the map. Much more open-feeling maps despite them being a bit smaller than Meltdown's.

The game's performance is decent despite my rig not being able to run everything at maximum. I don't notice any kind of crazy frame-dips at all. I have read about terrible optimization stories but I have not run into anything remotely close to those. It has tons of customization options for video as well as audio so you should have no problems tweaking it to acceptable parameters.

This game is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I typically do not play anything remotely close to the MOBA genre despite it being extremely popular. The reason being that game can take a veritable eternity to grind out a depressing loss(that was not necessarily even close). This game does basically nothing to alleviate that problem either in 2 of the 3 game modes. Capture is the only mode that doesn't take an eternity to finish.

Incursion can take a long time on top of the game basically handicapping you further for getting your ass handed to you by the opponents through longer respawn times and being basically pushed into your spawn unable to push out. It's basically a long, slow, bleed-out. Meltdown is very much the same way and it can take up to the 30 minute maximum the same as Incursion. I played a match that literally took 28m to lose 350ish to 500. That's not even a close match but it took almost the entire duration. This, to me, is that antithesis of entertaining.

Keep in mind, I have not played a ton of this game. This is basically due to the absolutely crippling and terrible matchmaking system. One must sit in a queue until 5 people are gathered in some form. Then, one must sit there until another team is at some point filled to be your opponents. There are no asymmetrical matches or drop in/out. If you lose a player mid-match, Science help you. At this stage of the game's life it is absolutely depressing to have to sit in a queue longer than you play a match. There's also the option to surrender if you are getting particularly destroyed. Worse yet, even if you do not want to give up, your teammates can decide that for you through a majority vote. I want to play and learn more about the game, not give up and sit in a queue again. This doesn't even take into account the fact that it's easy to get a team of newbs matched up with a team of level 100 veterans.

I also want to add that character navigation can be a real nightmare sometimes. It is extremely easy to get snagged or caught on the tiniest blades of grass. You also cannot jump up onto things if you are too close. You will likely get snagged on it for whatever reason. Many maps are just a death sentence for the character Attikus since he's so big he gets stuck on everything and his escape skill is also useless because of the exact same problem. His huge head also gets caught on some things. It's a total freak show.

Conclusion
I like this game. However, it has issues. Like you cannot back out after you choose a character and realize your team has no support. Some character models are so huge they literally blot out the sun. They need a friendly-transparency setting for close-up situations because you will go blind often. Some kind of training dummy to test out different heroes would be awesome as well. Going in blind is not good for anyone. The matchmaking absolutely ruins this game for late adopters such as myself and its a real shame. The gameplay is actually pretty solid, though and a lot of fun. It is sad it is not more popular but it is what it is. If they had a much more robust PvE system it might be enough for me. The PvP barely interests me at all.

Recommendation
This is a tough one for me but I will say no. I like the gameplay a lot; it's a ton of fun. However, 2 of the 3 game modes take far too long for my taste. I like fighting games because it's over quickly and I can usually easily tell where I messed up and can maybe correct my errors in the future. In these kinds of games, it is anyone's guess as to what went wrong, when, and where.

If you like MOBAs, maybe give it a look. The biggest problem right now is the lack of players and the absolutely horrific matchmaking system.

If they could clean up the matchmaking and streamline the modes a tad bit I might recommend the game. But, until then, I don't think so.

P.S. To anyone saying this isn't a MOBA, stop being ridiculous. Okay, maybe it's not ALL a MOBA, but 2/3 of the pvp game modes definitely are. I know this because they are long, tedious, boring, and utterly unsatisfying to me. That is how I know it's a MOBA at its core.

Suggestions
I think this game could maybe be saved a bit if it allowed for games to function with <10 players. Have some kind of auto-balancing based on player-count. It also NEEDS some kind of drop in/out system because if people get salty, they will either surrender or quit. If the latter, they can then at least be replaced. Oh, but what about selecting a character? They could easily add some kind of settings the player could input to give them character preferences should they get spat out into an already started game. Primary, secondary, and maybe even tertiary choices in the case the chosen characters are already present in the game.

This does not even remotely address character balance since I don't know enough about the game to give accurate opinions on that.