Battleborn

The difference between a seminal and successful game and a game that ended up in no man's land between genres, is player attraction and retention. By marrying MOBA with FPS, Battleborn attempts to tap on both audiences yet it runs the danger to prove itself too much of a shooter for the MOBA diehards and too much of a MOBA for the FPS crowd.

Classic Gearbox shooting with an experimental MOBA twist, but it’s no Borderlands.

Battleborn's fun heroes and leveling will keep you hooked despite a lack of content.

Battleborn is a good game, that provides plenty of fun but it's just incredibly frustrating seeing all of these tiny issues that come in and ruin the fun every so often.

Gearbox had a great FPS-MOBA on their hands: loads of great characters, nice gameplay balance where everyone – melee and ranged DPS, support and tanks – had their roles to play. And they had to go and kill it with loot system that gives long-time players additional advantage over newcomers – not only they know maps and are better adjusted to local gameplay quirks, but they can literally have better stats right from the beginning of any match. [Issue#209, p.86]

With its bizarre characters and their big range of skills, Battleborn has some very entertaining moments, especially when playing it with friends. Unfortunately the single-player missions are not very entertaining. Battleborn really is a game to play for the competitive multiplayer, but you will need to be okay with the repetitive and pretty standard hack and shooting action.

Battleborn isn’t quite the innovative blend of MOBA and first-person shooter that it could have been, but that does not stop the game from delivering fun with a group of friends or random people online.

The combat is frantic and tense, but often feels samey and superficial. The in-match leveling works wonderfully in the campaign, but can become problematic in multiplayer. The varied cast of heroes adds longevity, but the game still feels relatively content light. With so many moving parts that never quite gel, I found plenty of things to love but just as much to feel confused by and ambivalent about.

Even with more than twenty playable characters, Battleborn fails to offer enough variety in its gameplay to keep players engaged for longer periods of time. And with an unfortunate release date, it is a game that will be forgotten in a matter of months.

Battleborn is a complete gaming package - it has 25 interesting characters, tons of things to unlock and cool story-driven missions. It is a pity that it tries too much to be a game for everyone - there's something for fans of single-player games, something for fans of cooperation and something suited online competition. Overwatch focuses on one thing and is well polished, Battleborn more or less fails in every aspect and is only OK, nothing more.

A chaotic, middling effort that should be low on your team-based shooter priority list. [July 2016, p.72]

Battleborn can be enjoyable, but only with friends and only for so long, especially when there’s a better alternative – Overwatch. [07/2016, p.52]

Not enough content and too much grinding detracts from the great cast of characters and great presentation. [Issue#252, p.58]

Gearbox is still good at jokes and impressive styling. Unfortunately devs forgot to add more innovation. The result in a fossilized first person MOBA, that will neither offend nor thrill. [Issue#264]

Unfortunately, there are better titles out there and the lack of identity was a real issue for me.

There’s certainly a fair bit here for some to like, particularly for those of you who want a MOBA that’s less of a long-term commitment, and a heck of a lot of content to get your teeth into, but Battleborn’s development-by-focus-group leaves it feeling a little bland, despite its brash stylings and Borderlands-esque attitude.

Battleborn has its moments, but its lack of maps and other niggling flaws makes it tough to recommend. There may well be a perfect FPS MOBA out there somewhere; but with Battleborn, the two genres feel fundamentally at odds with one another. It's not helped by its generic art direction and painfully unfunny sense of humor, which mostly consists of pointing toward some well-worn trope and asking, "Isn't that silly?" Right now, it feels geared toward the hardcore community in a way that makes it not very fun to play for more casual fans; and as Battleborn hasn't shown itself to be worth that kind of investment, I'm ready to take my leave of it.