Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep DLC Review

Borderlands 2 is easily one of my all time favourite games and it offers one of the most complete and engrossing multiplayer experiences available on current generation consoles. That’s not to say that there aren’t other great co-op titles out there but Borderlands 2 is certainly one of the best ever made. Personally I’ve already put in over 300 hours of co-op time on the original Borderlands, which was a big game to start with, but it really pushed the boat out in terms of value with some of the most expansive DLC I’ve ever seen. I’m rapidly catching up on that game time with Borderlands 2 and that’s thanks to even more expansive DLC than ever before and now Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep is set to keep that flame burning.

Said to be the biggest and most diverse expansion so far in the Borderlands series, Tiny Tina’s new DLC is like nothing that has gone before it, a crazy parody of a game within a game that is set to shake up the games usual mechanics in more ways than one. As you may already know, Tiny Tina is a crazy thirteen year old explosives expert and this DLC is effectively her take on the nerdy culture surrounding titles like Dungeons and Dragons, so expect it to be somewhat skewed from the blatantly ripped off source material, all ripped off in good spirit of course.

Everything has been given a little tweak in way or another, for starters your actually playing as Brick, Lillith, Mordecai and Tiny Tina, who are playing a board game which features the characters your actually controlling. So your playing as normal, but the whole thing is narrated by the other four with extra characters from the Borderlands universe dropping by to take the rolls of other characters within the board game known as Bunkers And Badasses… confused? You should be!

The world is huge, easily the biggest in terms of real estate for a Borderlands DLC and that is really saying something given the scale of previous expansions. Yet this one is far more dynamic than ever before, mostly due to the erratic nature of Tiny Tina and her method of telling a story. You enter the game world as it is full of sun and rainbows, that is deemed to boring, so the level changes before your eyes to something far more sinister.

This dynamic continues as indestructible level 100 enemies spawn, raining all kinds of hell on you, that is until someone like Lillith tells Tina to knock it off and it changes to something more reasonable, bringing you back to life in the process. The same goes for unsolvable puzzles, ridiculously impossible objectives such as “blow up the ocean” and more that change constantly as you play. Overall you really have no idea what is going on and your a dice roll away from madness at every corner, it is to be honest, brilliant fun!

Eridium still plays a big part too, it’s used for the local fruit machines for one, but also red chests have two D20 dice on them, first roll is free, but you can roll both if you pay some Eridium, roll high and you could get even better loot drops from the chest.

Enemies are easily the best thing on offer and generally you can expect to get your butt handed to you by an incredibly diverse new enemy set that features dragons, knights, orcs, treants (Like the Ents in Lord of the Rings, just as big too!), wizards, skeletons and more, not forgetting all the variants that range from giant editions, to midgets and all kinds of difficulty variants too that will keep you on your toes. Enemie spawn rates are also at an all time high and co-op gun fights go on longer than ever, but fortunately the loot keeps flowing too so it’s all good.

Overall I think it’s safe to say that Dragon Keep gives you more of everything, more new enemies than ever before, more loot drops, more options for spending Eridium, more epic battles and more places to explore. It also offers a truly dynamic and spontaneous gaming experience with one of the craziest plot lines I’ve ever heard. The writing is spot on and while Borderlands 2 managed a few chuckles from me in the last, Dragon Keep had genuine laugh out loud moments and poked plenty of fun at the gaming community and the surrounding culture at the same time. Unfortunately I can’t put most of this madness into words so why not check out the trailer below for a little taste of what you can expect.

Is this the best DLC ever made for Borderlands 2? I think it just might be.