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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel


Sly Reflex
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I'm two and a half hours in so far so these are just glancing impressions that I'll go into tomorrow when I've played a bit more.

It's not like a DLC. There's too much effort that's gone into it. However, some of it is incredibly lazy. Not going into it here, but some is just monumentally lazy.

The o2 mechanic isn't as stifling as people are making it out to be. In fact I'd go as far as saying it's actually a good thing, I'll detail why when I've played a bit more.

The characters talk a lot. Your avatar isn't silent. Outside of the usual spoutings they do they have actual lines referring to the story.

Some of the level design is atrocious. Truly maddening that there's parts that have managed to get through game testing and into the final product.

The writing is very high caliber. It's actually very funny and isn't above poking fun at itself, real world issues or the player.

I'll be back with more in depth impressions when I've played more. If you've got questions about the game leave them and if I can I'll answer them.

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I've spent all day on this. I guess I can do a semi informed view on it now.

The game itself is really big, From what unlocks and stuff I have, you're looking at a 20 odd hours plus to finish it before you start with doing all the side missions, it's really content heavy. There's hardly any graphical stuff that's been reused from BL2, it even looks like most of the guns have been tweaked. I'm sure there's a lot of assets that have been brought over graphically in the loot stuff but it's not really noticable to me yet. So that's good.

So what's the bad? I've noticed in a lot of places they've reused animations. I'm not talking about Bandits (or Scavs as they're called in this game) movements, I'm talking about fixed pieces. Stuff like people knocking on walls among loads of other things I won't go into here because spoilers.

All the enemies I've seen so far are 100% new, graphically. There's some things that fill similar roles to those enemies of Pandora but there's nothing that is like for like. Yep there might be flying mechanical contraptions but they act differently to the ones found in Borderlands 2. I think the only thing I've seen that acts the same is the turrets, but even those have a bit of a spin on them.

Chatter from enemies is a combo of new and old, more based on the new thing of everyone being Australian. It's massively stereotypical in a fun poking way. Even though some of the lines are old, they've had a fresh layer of 'Stralya' painted over them, so if you do play you're going to hear stuff you've heard before, but this time in a down under accent. You will get called a wanker a lot. I'm used to that.

The o2 mechanic. People complaining about this are full of shit. Even at my most incompetent wandering about looking in every nook and cranny I've never run out and died from it. As a commodity it is too plentiful, you end up picking it up without knowing. The further you get into the game the bigger capacity o2 you can carry too, so it gets to a point where it's just sort of there. What the inclusion of this loot/system does do is far better than what the relic system did that went before in Borderlands 2. In that system you had a buff that related to one thing, so you got a buff to your health, ammo, melee damage, whatever. In this game it does the same thing, but it widens the range on what you can do so specific builds can be achieved. There's thing like throwing a grenade while in the air costing no ammo, o2 canister replenishing health, vastly improved elemental damage while in the air, there's just too many things to list There's a lot of good things you get out of that piece of kit though. On top of those you also 'slam' the ground while in the air which causes an AoE damage to anything you land near. If you happen to have an item that has an element attached to it, it produces a nova which hits any enemies trapped in the radius for DoTs. It's basically another way to damage mobs for free. It doesn't cost any o2 and because you're jumping from place to place you're going to utilise it in the same way you'd use grenades or melee attacks. The icing on this new inclusions cake is that you can use the boost to speed up traversing areas on foot quicker. It's a win/win/win/win situation for a tiny payoff that eventually is going to be unnoticeable. It's a hell of an improvement on the relic way of doing things and I hope that something similar to this gets put into all future Borderlands games.

The voice acting is really very good outside of a few exceptions. It's a welcome break to hear people from outside of the USA in games and it gives TPS a unique feel whilst still retaining what Borderlands is about. The delivery and timing of exchanges is really well done.

I'm going to talk about some really shit stuff now. The level design can fucking blow at some points. In the previous games bosses only spawned as and when you were ready for them, so if you are going through an area it'd be slowly populated with bosses as you took on the missions and completed them. Now they are there all the time. One of my first encounters on Elpis was against a level 30 mob while I was level 5. Yeah. That's shite. That area should have been blocked off, inaccessible or the mob flat out shouldn't have been there.

The vehicles have a lot of issues with jumping in my experience. When I was playing alone there's 2 parts that require to make jumps in 2 different vehicles. It's structured more or less the same way Borderlands 1 and 2 are. You do some question, finish up and area, get a car and then do the thing that that specific car can do. I must have died 30 times or more trying to make these jumps. The low gravity physics model just doesn't like the driving model from what I can figure out. The gravity isn't low enough for the cars, or the boost fucks the system up when you're in the air. I don't know. I really don't like it how it is now and I really hope those 2 jumps are the only ones in the game because the time spent trying to get over them was infuriating. To make matters worse the falls are filled with lava which is an instant kill. Any jumps that you fail in a car or on foot will end in death. There's no recovery, there's no coming back. You fuck up, you end up respawning a lot, often through no fault of your own. To make matters worse the vehicle jumps seem completely random too, a friend I'm co-opping with made both jumps first time. I thought it was just me being shite, but a lot of people on Reddit and Gearbox's forums are complaining at what a shit it is.

The colours used to denote o2 and moonstone are bad. I've no idea why they moved the special currency from magenta to teal and I'm even more confused by o2 being marked by blues spikes. Both these colours look similar from a distance. The o2 colour is too close to the blue rarity of loot, to make matters worse every time you kill something these pickups fly out, so you have all these blue spikes obscuring blue drops. o2 should have had white spikes. Moonstone should have had magenta spikes, although saying that Moonstone should have picked up on contact like money and ammo. It doesn't though, which is fucking stupid.

You can no longer mark loot as trash. They should be adding more options to mark loot, not taking them away. It's a silly change in my opinion.

The music is shite. None of it is memorable. I understand that they can't really use the slide guitar as it'd be out of place in this game, but on the whole it's characterless electronic plinky plonk rubbish. The intro song feels really out of place too. It's a real big letdown after the ambient music of the previous games, which for me are some of the best video game music ever.

Stuff that's changed or is new. The insane numbers from 2 have dropped to more reasonable figures that scale better as you level. For instance at level 10 I'm getting weapons that do 100 damage, in Borderlands 2 level 2 or 3 would have 100 damage. It's like they've levelled the playing field by making mobs, guns, other equipment and health that increase on a standard framework instead of going fucking nuts like they did in Borderlands 2, everything in that game was increasing at different speeds and it made for a right old fuck up at higher levels.

Slag has been removed from the game. Ice has been implemented. It does what it says on the tin, no surprises there. When you kill a frozen enemy its shattered parts glide across the area in slow motion, it's a nice touch.

Lasers have been introduced. There's different ones and from what I've experienced they're all brilliant. This is how the assault rifles should have been in Borderlands 2. They are fun to use and they have good damage. So that's nice.

New chests called Moonstone chests have been introduced. They cost 40 units to open and have rare loot in them. Specifically these chest are the only place you can find 'Moonshine' weapons. These weapons have buffs on them. The ones I've had have been able to bypass shields, make grenades cost no ammo if they result in a kill, recharge o2 on kill and provide a small XP boost on kill. I'm sure there's other buffs, I've just not seen them yet. These guns come with swanky TRON inspired skins and I think they're basically the replacement rarity for E-tech guns. They are nice, I think I'd rather have a Moonshine weapon over an E-Tech now I've used both.

I've not covered everything, but i think that's enough for this post. I'll post more thought on the classes I've played as when I can be bothered. Not that I think anyone cares. :(

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If it wasn't for the splash screens at the start you'd have no idea it wasn't made by Gearbox. It's more Bioshock 2 to Bioshock than Gears of War: Judgment to the Gears or War series.

On my single player I've just hit the point where you get the 4th weapon slot. The game looked like it was going to be wrapping up but it's done the usual thing of "Oh there's loads more".

There's a lot of origins stuff in here, I'm not going to spoil it because some of you will end up playing. I'll maybe do a spoiler thing for people that know they won't play it for certain if people ask for it.

Gameplay wise I'm near reaching the capstone of one of Wilhems trees. As a pet class I think he's a solid foundation that plays like a cross between Axton and Gaige. You end up going down a lot, a lot of your fighting is done on the tightrope between running around and crawling on your knees looking for a second wind, although his action skill can and will provide plenty of those and insure that when you do get up that you'll not get downed right away. Out of the current 4 classes he's the run of the mill one that any player can be comfortable with, old reliable if you will.

I got my hands on some more nice loot. The lasers really do kick a lot of arse, especially the Ghostbuster style proton beam ones. They're like the best things ever, I defy anyone not to have a massive smile on their face while using one.

I'll probably cover Claptrap next time I post. Maybe later on tonight when I've played a bit more with him.

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Not all the enemies are new. Some return as part of some origins stuff. Some are repurposed too but basically behave in the same way a very specific type do on Pandora. That's story stuff, innit.

So Claptrap. He's a class. He has a tree that's devoted to support. I know one person here that likes that sort of stuff and would pick him just because of all the healing and buffs he can give to the party. However it's not as straightforward as that.

His action skill throws a spanner in the works to anyone that's not the hardest of hardcore Borderlands player. Upon activating the action skill it refills your health and throws a load of hexagons up on the screen.

allicons_zps4640008e.jpg

In about 2 or 3 seconds it deletes all the ones that are not applicable, centres the ones that are still lit up on the screen and selects a skill it thinks is going to 'help most'. There's a reason that sentence ends like that, because sometimes it's no help at all. In fact sometimes it a complete hinderance. Almost all of these skills affect every single person in the party.

Funzerking is a riff on Gunzerking. A duplicate of your main hand gun appears in your left hand and fires constantly while you regenerate ammo. Everyone else in the party also fires uncontrollably. Everyone gets annoyed because it happens pretty much without warning. Amusingly Claptrap starts shouting stuff about ammo and if he had veins they'd be bulging right now.

Clapturret is what it sounds like. A turret is thrown into the field and works like Axtons turret. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when this happens, as it's pretty helpful.

Deception is Claptraps take on Zer0. Claptrap throws out a hologram that dances and mocks the enemies while you're invisible. Unlike Zer0, you can fire and do all sorts of aggressive stuff without breaking the stealth.

Blight Phoenix is a combination of Lilith and Mayas skill tree stuff. A mini Claptrap flies about the area corroding and burning mobs while aggroing them.

The Mechromancer gets some love by giving you a mini Claptrap that flies about aggroing mobs while you lose loads of accuracy, do mega damage and have bullets that refelct all over the fucking place. It's awesome.

Krieg also gets some love, Claptrap drops his weapons, start emitting novas and does increase melee damage with what looks like some gears attached to a piece of junk. Amusingly he shouts all of Kriegs lines, but in Claptraps voice. Everyone in the party gets the melee buff.

Clap in the box turns you into a massive bomb that blows up causing massive damage. It's shite and I skip the skill that allows it to happen because you have literally no control over it.

Rubber ducky makes all players in the game wear rubber rings and bounce up and down uncontrollably while reflecting enemy fire. At first it seems really annoying, but then you realise that everyone can just ground pound enemies to death really quickly.

Gun wizard makes the reload fire rate of everyone in the party go insane. It's actually a really nice skill.

There's another skill where you can heal people like the TF2 Medic, it rarely happens though and I've no idea what the fucking deal with it is.

There's other skills too, I've just not unlocked them yet. When you press for the action skill you seriously have no idea what you're going to get until it happens until you've played a bit and understand what the selection process is. For instance, I know that if you throw a grenade and then activate your action skill, you have a good chance of throwing the turret out. Thing is, these selections happen so fast that it's kind of hard to make connections between what's happening, when to press and what you'll get. The area changes fast, killing one mob can mean the difference between going invisible or turning into a melee focused beast.

What I'm trying to get at is that playing as Claptrap is sort of like maining Mokujin in Tekken. Although you have a loose grasp on what can happen, you're never truly in control and without good friends to understand that you're essentially spinning a roulette wheel every time the shit hits the fan. Sometimes you're going to win. Sometimes you're going to lose. The only guaranteed thing you're going to do is laugh, because no matter how annoying it is, it's still pretty funny even when you're getting dicked over because of how the game handles it. When Claptrap is in the game it turns every single firefight into a random minigame of Mario Party. His skill makes a a game where random drops are the focus of playing even randomer making it so that you're always going to have to second guess what is going to happen next.

Out of Wilhelm and Claptrap, Claptrap is certainly the most fun to play, even though making it through an area is complete chaos.

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Finished in co-op now. That ending, man. It feels totally phoned in. The gameplay and everything is fine, it's just that they might as well have told you to fuck off at the end.

At least the outro song was good. Perfect even pretty much sums up the people involved.

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  • 3 years later...

After getting this for Xmas 2015 (I think), and with the potential for BL 3 to be announced at E3 - even if Randy Pitchford said it won't be - I've finally installed and started this as part of The Handsome Collection. It looks great, even 2 and a bit years on. The cartoon graphics and vibrant colours really make it feel incredibly lively and give it a timeless quality that a lot of cel-shaded games seem to have.

 

Gameplay-wise it's still the BL you know and love. 

 

I'd actually started it a few weeks ago on a mate's PS4 and went the gunslinger woman (can't remember her name). I got my ass repeatedly handed to me on the first boss so this time I've picked Wilhelm with his two drones. This suits my playstyle much better and I'm already enjoying it more.

 

I mean, Sly said it all in his in-depth impressions really, I'm just here to say yeah I'm playing it and yeah I'm enjoying it. The only thing I'd argue with is that I haven't hit any level 30 enemies yet, and I'm at level 10, so maybe that's been fixed in a patch?

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This game gets a lot of undeserved hate. I mean I can see why, it really should have been a big paid expansion for BL2, if that would have been the case it'd have been praised as some of the best DLC to ever come out.

 

I think as well the classes in this are the best designed out of the series. There's barely any filler in the skills, they stripped out all the crap that nobody would ever use to make them skill trees extra tight.

 

Story isn't bad either, you get to see the other side of the coin and see why Jack is like he is.

 

4 hours ago, regemond said:

I mean, Sly said it all in his in-depth impressions really, I'm just here to say yeah I'm playing it and yeah I'm enjoying it. The only thing I'd argue with is that I haven't hit any level 30 enemies yet, and I'm at level 10, so maybe that's been fixed in a patch?

 

There's actually a mini raid boss you can get to from the very minute you set foot on the planet, it's near where you do the Janey Springs missions. It's hidden but not sort of hidden, so I doubt it'll have been patched.

 

I think they've sold a dud to the press in regards of Borderlands 3. I think they'll call it Borderworlds or something similar.

 

If you see the 'sports' side quest, do it. It's hilarious. I love that they poked fun at that and the Aussie accents made it even funnier.

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Still plugging away at this. It's weird. I have no real urge to play it, but I seem to have a lot of fun and can't drag myself away when I actually put it on.

 

I've not been paying much attention to the story at all. Both main quests and side quests. As far as I'm concerned there is no story and everything is there as an excuse to shoot something else. Anyway, I tuned in for a bit while playing it this morning and was definitely tickled by a couple of things.

 

Spoiler

First, I did a mission for Hammerlock, where he asked me to hunt/capture a couple of baby threshers and fire them to him on Pandora. He then tells me they developed a taste for Pandoran flesh and that he hopes he hasn't messed with the ecosystem. That seems to have gone well given how many types there were in BL2, and the sheer number of them.

 

Second, a side mission involving Jack and the Meriff. I had to go find some hidden Echo devices and destroy them. You got hints of Jack's dick attitude, as well as the idea that the Meriff wasn't all bad really. I liked that one.

 

@Sly Reflex Did the sports side quest involve basketball?

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Spoiler
11 minutes ago, regemond said:

I did a mission for Hammerlock, where he asked me to hunt/capture a couple of baby threshers and fire them to him on Pandora. He then tells me they developed a taste for Pandoran flesh and that he hopes he hasn't messed with the ecosystem.

 

If you look carefully one of the Threshers you send is Terramorpheus, the raid boss at the end of the vanilla game.

 

The sport you're looking for is Cricket.

 

I'm surprised you'e not complained about Pickle yet. I fucking hated that character.

 

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I hated Tina (redeemed herself in the last DLC), but Pickle really grated on me.

 

It's going to be really interesting to see what you think about the story overall, it (along with TftBL) sets things into motion that will hopefully be concluded in the next game.

 

I want to play the DLC for this but I'm not paying full price for it. Hoping to pick it up in the steam summer sale. Fancy playing Jack or Aurelia as the next playthrough. Not sure how 'Jack' plays, but Aurelia is a sniper. Since I enjoyed Mordecai and Zer0 it stands to reason that I'd dig her as well.

 

Speaking of which, Aurelia is ice based. What do you think of the cryo based attacks filling in or slag? I can't say I'd want slag in the next game because it causes some mad issues at end game, once you get to your third playthrough or OP levels you're basically having to lean on it as hard as possible to get anywhere, it felt very limiting. Cryo doesn't feel like it's going to have those limitations.

 

There's a lot of stuff TPS does miles better over BL2, but people will still shit on it as the black sheep of the family. They'd be mad to leave beam weapons, the jump boosters, the grinder moonstone weapons and all the other little improvements behind. Just don't bring the phoned in level design at the closing act of the game.

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Tina I completely understand the hate for, but once her backstory was filled in, yeah, I ended up quite liking her. Pickle is just kind of there, and as a slightly shorter BL experience I can't imagine having to deal with him too much. Saying that though, the last main story mission/boss I had anything to do with was

 

Spoiler

The Bosun,

 

so I still don't think I'm particularly far into it.

 

The DLC is included with The Handsome Collection isn't it? I'm not paying for Borderlands DLC either, I've only ever bought the GOTY editions, so not planning on changing that any time soon!

 

I quite like the cryo stuff, I've got an assault rifle doing Cryo damage that I've been leaning on for crowd control. Even when presented with rifles that do higher damage, I've kept using this one because it also uses an increasing fire rate - the longer you hold the trigger the faster it hits. It's fantastic for whittling through an enemy's health/armour, and when the cryo damage kicks in to freeze them it's even better. Bear in mind though, I only ever did one playthrough of BL 1 and 2, so I never had much of a need to get full on with the skills etc. I always just pick what I have fun with and see what final power benefit I want to work towards.

 

Totally agree with the improvements too. The beam weapons are so much fun. I'm not great with the verticality of jump boosters (although sniping a head shot as you come back down to land is so satisfying), so I try to avoid them, but I can see why people would love them.

 

Everything to do with the currency and weapons is great too. Instead of getting a big fat wallet full of cash from trading guns in all the time, I've got one mission where I need to donate 50 white weapons, so they all get dropped there. It finally gives added value for the white weapons, you're not expected to just drop them anymore. Yes, it's optional, but it's a great idea. The weapon grinder - awesome. Want a blue weapon? Just give us three green (or whatever way around it is!).

 

I'd like to see them bring different gravities into the next installment too. If you do end up having to fly around different planets, have one with the same feel as Pandora's moon. Have one where jumps barely get you off the ground (with wider/lower to the ground enemies to match). Have one that sends you stupidly high into the air with every jump. Just go nuts.

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The grinder you can farm for specific legendaries as well, if you have some sort of idea what you're doing. Think of the things you're putting in as ingredients in a recipe more than junk you're just throwing in. It gives value to the junk you would normally pass over because it gives you things to look out for that could potentially end up with you having a roll at one of the guns you want.

 

I liked the moonshine stuff as well, that's a real "Fuck yeah!" moment when you come across something that has really attractive attributes on it. I think the chests are a bit expensive to open, if you are playing with less people in the lobby they should be cheaper to open, but have less chance to drop higher grade stuff, that way you're not outright penalised for playing alone, but if you have a full lobby and you open one there's going to be good shit for everyone rather than just guns for 1 or 2 people.

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Jesus, I might have to look into some of the stuff with the grinder then. I'm honestly not a high-level player with these games, and I take a lot of my enjoyment out of the ride, rather than trying to work the system to get the best out of it. That there's so much depth, even to the point of being able to conjure up the specific weapon you want, is just fantastic to me though.

 

The chests. Eurgh. At no point have I had more than 30 moonshine on me. And when I have had that much I've used it to beef up my ammo capacity, as the guns I use just chew through ammo like sweets. I'd like to open one, but I'm not farming for hours just to get enough capital for a potential disappointment. I like the BL games because you don't have to grind. You can track your progress, and the game can consistently challenge you (even playing on your own), but you never have that moment where you're like 'fuck, this is too hard'. I don't want to grind moonshine.

 

Also, after writing that little paragraph, I realised I meant Moonstone, not shine, and you meant Luneshine, which is the special added effect of a weapon... Honestly, are the Luneshine attributes much different to the normal side effects of a gun? Does Luneshine do anything that any other gun can't?

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Ah, yeah, luneshine. I can't remember all of the effects, but there's ones that give you better grenade damage. To better understand what that means as a whole, you need to understand that grenade damage = any AoE damage and that Torgue weapons and any elemental weapons have an AoE splash when you hit. It's an across the board buff that you'll find AoE weapons with fast firing rates will benefit greatly from.

 

There's another that bypasses shields which is especially handy on some of the mobs that have high shields but low healthpools.

 

I think there's bonuses that add to your shields and grant you XP faster. There's probably a crit one in there as well, very handy for Jakobs pistols and sniper rifles.

 

The luneshine bonuses feel a little better thought out than the Eridium weapons in BL2. I'd be fine with the the different attributes that Eridium weapons bring or straight up boosts that Luneshine bring. Not both though, it's got to be one of the other. Maybe addskill tree perks from the games classes to the pool of what can generate. For instance if you have a Luneshine grenade it could have the perk from the Gunzerkers tree where you'd sometimes throw 2 grenades for the price of one, or maybe missed shots ricochet to the target like they can from the Mechromancers tree. Make that pool deep and interesting with some real game breaking skills when you combine them with the classes skills int he current game. Doesn't matter if they're balanced, it's PvE so you don't need to worry about falling into the trap Destiny did trying to keep everything bland enough so that it worked in a PvP environment.

 

The thing with the moonstones (or iridium if you're playing BL2) is that once you've maxed out your carry capacity you're left stockpiling it with nowhere to spend it. BL2 rectified that by introducing Raid bosses where you had to buy in with Eridium, as well some chests in the final DLC where you could either open the chest without payment, but if you did it increased the chances there was something good in there depending on the d20 rolls. Problem with these chests is they right at the end game when you're likely to be maxed out on that currency. With TPS I think they decided to put them in so that people could drop some moonstones on them while farming bosses, since they would have spare. As a new player coming across them they're just a big tease because opening them is such a rare occurrence until you've gotten through a couple of playthroughs and have an abundance of currency to open them.

 

Speaking of Eridium and Moonshine. Make them auto pick up in the next game, Gearbox. Show us whatever this currency is going to be so we have some idea of what it looks like and does, and then just put it into our pockets as we walk over it. More shootin' with auto lootin!

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  • 1 month later...

So I've been playing this with a hope of giving the people that are currently battling away through BL2 a leg up with some nice loot as they transit over games.

 

Still sort of think my original opinion holds up. It's way too big for a DLC but it feels like it should have been a bumper DLC.I think that would have made it be received more positively. I don't know. It would have been nice to break cannon in the game and have the vault hunters be allowed to play the campaigns of the opposite campaign. I know you have stuff like oZ kits, relics and lasers to worry about, but I don't think it'd be too hard to make it happen, should they have wished it.

 

Some of the areas are still awful. The verticality the low gravity jumping brings to the game has really tested the people that made the levels and in a lot of instances they've failed. Sometimes it looks like you can make it but you can't and other times it looks like you can't make it but you can. I think what it could have done with was a marker on screen as well as on your map, because when you're in a room that's a clusterfuck of pipes and jump pads. I'm all for working a level out but it's too much, especially if you're backtracking through areas and are just trying to go from a to b. Platforming isn't Borderlands' strong point, so having a lot of this shit in is really misguided.

 

One thing that has impressed me is Aurelia's attention to detail. She's this character that is distilled evil, rich beyond believe and is basically on a holiday to shoot wildlife and people without consequences. Her design is phenomenally good. The skill trees are interesting and there's something I want to take in all of them, there seems to be very little waste. There's voice lines for the skills you take a trek down the sniper tree there a skill that buffs you if you miss with a sniper shot. She'll shout "That was your warning shot!" or try to cover up a missed shot by saying she meant to do it. Other details is a little wave she does when she goes into fight for your life, it's the most comically toff way of waving you could imagine, there's literally no reason for it being included other than it contributing to her character. Same with the way she rides one of the in game vehicles, side saddle with the most ridiculous upper class posture. Her melee attack is a bitch slap as well. Very fitting. Also because she is rich she starts the game with two purples instead of junk, as well as a hefty amount of cash for you to put into the vending machines for better gear if you're inclined to.

 

I think from what I've seen TPS has the most well designed action skills I've seen in a game. In the first Borderlands game it was kind of frustrating to kick off a skill and then watch it as you either placed it wrong or you timed it wrong or just ballsed it up. Roland's turret was a prime example of that, you'd throw it down and because it only faced one way you could waste that shit if you were unlucky. Axton sort of managed to make the same idea a little bit better by allowing the turret a full 360 degree angle where it could fire in any direction, as well as be stuck to walls and thrown huge distances, and be picked up if you could physically go up to it and reclaim it for a partial refund on your cooldown. Wilhelm goes and takes the best of everything and allows the turrets to follow you and for you to call them back with a press of the button if there's nothing for them to shoot at. Aurelia's sort of does the same thing, if you press it and there's nothing to hit, it just refunds automatically.  It works a little bit like a cross between Mordecai's Bloodwing and Maya's Phaselock. You throw it out, it seeks an enemy and then starts throwing a blizzard up that freezes shit. If they die while under the influence of the blizzard then it moves in to the next target until it runs out. If there are no targets to hit it comes back and refunds part of the cooldown. As I see it now there's literally no fat on that skill, it's a complete joy to use.

 

I think that sums up Aurelia, she takes a style of play that a lot of people find hard to cope with and gives you tools to get at least some fun out of using a sniper if you're not capable of doing so. If you are it brings this meta game in of trying to hoard all the mobs up, freezing them to the spot and then capping them in the head shot after shot and watching the chunks of ice float in the low gravity. It's great.  The only thing I don't really like about her is she never shuts the fuck up. The lines she says are great, but there are points where she is saying them back to back. Repetition is going to make that part of her character grating if they aren't careful.

 

Other things I've noticed since I started playing? The drops are quite bad. I've not seen many purples and I've not seen any legendaries yet. However, I've been getting fucking loads of the moon rock currency which wasn't a thing when the game originally came out, it definitely feels like they're being more generous with that. Truth is, you're going to need it, since the ammo you can carry gets hammered since the pacing of the game doesn't give you your third weapon slot until well into the game. Awful pacing really.

 

You can tell this game was done by a studio that wasn't involved in the original games. There's so much good to it, but the parts that are shitty really get stuck in your craw.

 

Cryo is way better than Slag. Performs nearly the same function without the fucking about. 

 

I hope the people at Gearbox paid close attention to what worked and what didn't in BL2 and TPS for when it comes around to BL3. There's a lot of lessons that can be learned, and in a world where developers are too fucking stupid to realise they're making the same mistakes it is tantamount that that particular issues stops happening.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finished up with my first character now.

 

Fuck me is this game stingy with loot. I think it's partially the grinders fault, they want you to collect guns and then throw them in the grinder. While that's an ok idea it's not sustainable throughout the course of a playthrough. I mean greens are plentiful but you need three of the same to grind to get one blue. Three blues to a purple. That's 9 greens all of the same type to get a purple. I don't know if you can get an orange from the way the grinder works because you need to figure out 'recipes'. This isn't good.

 

In fact the first legendary bit of kit I got was the custom head from beating the game. Not much of a consolation because it's ugly as fuck. It wasn't until I was mopping up missions after the completion I got my first drop. It's way too low for my current playthrough, but I'll ship IT across whenever I do another playthrough. It's pretty bad that it is so miserly with soling out decent guns, Borderlands 2 does a much much better job of randomly dropping nice and interesting stuff on your journeys. Not to say there's not that in this game, it just feels like it's locked away behind missions or behind extra frugal loot drops.

 

I think this whole gun problem makes the game harder than it should be. I honestly would not have been able to beat the last boss if it wasn't for the E-GUN. Nothing else I had was practical of made a dent in the boss. In fact I think the lasers are in general a bit OP. I really want to see them in future games though, there's something quite satisfying about just shooting from the hip without having to worry about spread or anything like that.

 

I'm going to try and finish up all the sidequests I can and then go on to the Claptastic Voyage, which is apparently a very well put together bit of DLC from what people say.

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