I've now played Wonderlands and New Vegas, and Gearbox has done a much better job than Bethesda. Starting off, both have insanely fun combat, as New Vegas's VATS system is likely one of the best ones in the series, alongside the janky mechanics making it more fun, and Wonderlands having a seriously amazingly well developed combat system, similar to BL2 in the sense that you cant just stick with one item. My favorite part of the combat system is the fact that you are able to design your abilities to your best synergy, which allows a massive amount of playstyles rather than only 2 metas per 6 characters in BL2. The exception with BL2 is that you can shape your character to work with more fun playstyles, but you still need to do a lot to get to that point, and you still are given the same action skills depending on your character. Wonderlands, however, has a total of 120 different combinations without how you use your skill points, as you get to choose from one of classes, and one of 5 subclasses, as well as each class/subclass having 4 different actions skills when together. This allows you to create a playstyle just for yourself that can be as challenging or as breezy as you'd like it. You can be a fungal necromancer who has a demi-lich and mushroom pet, or a master wizard who also has a magical bow that shreds through enemies, or you can be a ice brawler who can spam 2 different spells (default is 1 without a certain action skill) while also crushing everything with ice fists. The possibilities are limitless. Now, furthering into New Vegas's gameplay, I feel like it didn't do anything new. Sure the guns are fun and such, but the base game is just like Fallout 4 only with less tedious missions. Thankfully, the DLCS are very fun. I compare Dead Money and Honest Hearts to Far Harbor and Nuka World, as all 4 DLCs are very engaging and introduce new characters that are actually interesting, alongside new loot. Joshua Graham is an extremely fun character who I feel is one of the best in the serious (Other than Valentine), especially when contrasted with boring Fallout 4 characters like Garvey, Danse, and the brotherhood leader who is so boring I forgot his name. Meanwhile, Wonderlands has only 4 main characters, and they're all great. There's Tina, of course, Frette, who is a very funny character who doesn't crack jokes often, but is able to counter the other characters in witty banter at a very natural pace, Valentine, who is Frette's foil, as he is commonly the one cracking jokes that, while not funny at first, easily settle in with the rest of the story as a natural component, and Will Arnett Dragon Lord, who is easily the most interesting and funniest character out of all of them. While Tina has branding and has been enjoyable since the beginning, Dragon Lord is a highly interesting character that genuinely was able to shape the entire story from a regular "defeat the big bad" story to a developed story about assumption of power, trauma, and loss of innocence, as well as being the only perfect foil to Tiny Tina as a character that she had used every since she killed off the Handsome Sorcerer in Dragon's Keep. Overall, I believe that Wonderlands is a much better engaging game than New Vegas, even when Vegas has some great components to it. Now, do I think Wonderlands is better than BL2? No, absolutely not. BL2 is still an insanely fun game, which is literally designed to make you feel as OP as possible when going up against the series' biggest bad. Not a single other Borderlands game lets your health get into the millions. In addition, when you figure out the best ways to get through BL2, it's story can be a quick run-through as only a few hours. Wonderlands, on the other hand, has a story length comparable to a game like San Andreas. It is long, but not nearly as long as other AAA games like RDR2, where you can play for 100 hours and not even be close to the epilogue. Still, I believe Wonderlands to be an amazing game, and entirely worth the $60. I still haven't even dived into the DLC yet, and since they seem to have the same effort as Maliwan Takedown (the best DLC in the series), I am entirely open to playing them. Ill add onto this chat as soon as I play them, and will answer any questions in the meantime.
