Borderlands 2

[Stark]

Has anyone finished the game? From the perspective in endgame, its unfortunately clear that Gearbox didn't learn much from the first game. Around level 25, players are faced with having out-levelled most of the game, and the new areas having uninteresting enemies that require specific 'good' guns or grinding through pools of hitpoints. While the maps are generally more interesting and better designed, there still isn't an awful lot to do in any of them, and they just boil down to a featureless open area and a few s-bends and ammo crates. The quest structure is actually inferior, since its hub-and-spoke generally rather than local, and you end up batting around different maps with little real sense of continuity of effort. I hear they made the different areas visible from each other, but this only serves to highlight how bizarre their map choices are and really show up some of the daft as shit story stuff.

The sidequests are generally entertaining, being midget-and-hillbilly murder and insanity, which is what was good about the first game. The main questline, however, is incongruous and fucking terrible. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, because its so awful it has to be seen to be believed, but rest assured its simultaneously hopelessly cliched, dramatically a failure and hinges on a series of retcons and writers fiat to even exist.

I returned my copy. Sherry still enjoys it, but unless NG+ is fun (and not just MAKE HITPOINT POOLS EVEN LARGER) I doubt she'll keep it either. File Borderlands 2 under 'developers never understood what made original game good, create derivative sequel'.

[Executor32]

I finished it last night and I have only this to say: Hyperion Infiltrators can fuck right off.

[Vendetta]

I started NG+ and they've done some interesting stuff. Elemental resists are really significant now, non-armoured targets take 50% damage from caustic but about 200% from fire, everything with a shield takes only 50% from both caustic and fire until the shield is down.

There are new enemy types as well, bandit types come with armour instead of flesh now (although armour is now just a health bar type, not locational like in the first game), so occasionally you'll need a caustic weapon in the middle of a fight with otherwise flesh enemies where you need fire.

So it could have been really fun.

But it's got massive HP pools, which fucking ruins it. I literally hit a brick wall in the third area because there were enemies that took about ten reloads of my fire gun that was hitting for 4000-5000 a time and ticking 700s whilst the enemy was slagged, and would reduce me from 7000 health and 4000 shield to about 100 health in a single hit, which was an AoE leap attack of infinite distance that I couldn't possibly avoid.

So I've stopped playing it.

[CaptHawkeye]

So problems that irked me from the first game have actually been magnified? Next year it is.

[Vendetta]

In the first playthrough, not so much. In the first playthrough it's mostly not bullet sponge enemies. But when you enter the second playthrough it kicks in hard.

Also, because nerds cried that there was no story in the first game and games have to have stories to be real games, right? the game has a story, which literally only hurts it.

[Losonti Tokash]

It's not even just a lame, incredibly cliche tryhard of a story that appears to have been written by people from TVTropes, it constantly contradicts itself at almost every turn. The silliest one is the game's intro telling youberidium only appeared after the game's vault was opened, but then a sidequest tells you the whole reason anyone came to Pandora ages ago was to mine the eridium that didn't exist yet. It has zero significance to anything but they're so proud of their story and can't even remember its most basic elements.

[Stark]

Regarding enemy variety, the late game showed the same thing. For ages any Hyperion mission was endlessly repeated gun or suicide bots - then right at the end they introduce half a dozen new ones. Who needed variety in the interminable midgame?

It's a real shame that the lab rat guys are really interesting but little used. Caustic caverns is one of my favorite environments but its dead boring.

Los, you can't go past the impassable force field door which is literally an archway on a road you could simply go around or over, which you reach during a helicopter assault.

[Vendetta]

It's not even how dull and stupid the story is, it's how the demands of story fuck with the feeling that you're just arsing around freely doing random nonsense for people of questionable sanity.

Whilst there are a couple of times where you get a big wedge of sidequests there feels like way less of them this time.

It also occasionally breaks the whole flow of the game, like when your mission hub (and bank) fucks off and you can't access it for a few areas, which is irritating in the extreme.

[CaptHawkeye]

In the first playthrough, not so much. In the first playthrough it's mostly not bullet sponge enemies. But when you enter the second playthrough it kicks in hard.

Also, because nerds cried that there was no story in the first game and games have to have stories to be real games, right? the game has a story, which literally only hurts it.

Shit I liked how character development in Blands was limited to one liners. It let you imagine whatever you wanted about the characters because the game called for literally nothing else in that department. Who plays these games and really thinks "Ya know Lilith's boobs need more backstory." ?

[Vendetta]

The worst thing is that the story and character development is all about the old characters, who we already spent a million years not giving a shit about in the old game, and who are now completely nothing like their one liners and limited expressiveness made them out to be in the first game.

It's jarring, strange, and even worse than not even having a story. Hell, it would have been enough to say "there is another vault, they can't both have tentacle monsters in, right?". (Hint: They do, well, this one has a dragginz in, which can at least move, and is therefore 1000% better as a boss, if still not actually much good).

[Stark]

All the fatties.

Vendetta, I think there must be less content overall. When I finished Blands it took me ages to finish all the sidequests but I could polish them all off in an afternoon if I could be motivated to play any more. Since all the rewards are low level useless I'm not sure I can.

And how lazy is the customization? Not only is it bizarre and you unlock them in silly ways, but the items you use to get colour combos has a colour swatch and the list you select your colour combo from FUCKING DOESN'T. Do we really need six different variations on 'green'?

How about choice of rewards when the mission never tells you what say option is until its too late? Want shotguns? TOO BAD YOU TURNED IN AND GOT A PISTOL.

Vendetta, the post game B1 convo you can witness at HQ is super lame DLC/Blands 3 foreshadowing. My soul actually shrank.

And take it back - Brick is just like B1 Brick. That's why hes the only fun or funny character! It's hilarious they transformed Roland into some GREAT MILITARY LEADER and his useless army is totally outclassed by Bricks army of psychos with helicopters.

[Vendetta]

True, Brick is still entertaining in a way that the others are not.

And yeah, quite why Roland is now president captain rebel leader mans and why anyone listens to him given that he appears to be completely ineffectual compared to Brick, whose plan boils down to "punch people, and if that does not work punch them again", and, indeed, why the original characters stayed on Pandora and didn't just fuck off to hunt treasure on less shit planets is not likely to be addressed.

[CaptHawkeye]

Well I read a plot summary and it sounds like they turned Lilith into Generic Fattass Asperger Fantasy Woman. Too bad. I was hoping for further implications of megalomaniac insanity and pseudo villainy.

[Stark]

They stayed so the player could get a blowjob from the game and the first plot could be retconned to please nerds.

OH MY GOD WILHELM IS UNSTOPPABLE.
I think Lilith went from being a psycho to beig a typical super powerful woman written by men and thus is amazingly weak and vulnerable (and a drug addict).

[Executor32]

Yeah, Wilhelm was disappointingly easy, after how hyped up he was by Angel and the others. I was expecting an awesome boss fight, not a marginally-stronger-than-usual Loader.

[Vendetta]

If Wilhelm had been that random giant robit that showed up out of nowhere near the end that might have at least justified the buildup.

Not that the giant robit was terribly challenging, even solo it fell pretty swiftly to the cunning plan of hiding behind a pillar and shooting it a million times with sniper bullets.

But, y'know, at least it was big and covered in guns.

[Stark]

He didn't even get a line. He only existed to provide yet more fatnerd handjobs like OMG U SO MUCH BETTAHHHHHHZ by dying.

I mean TK Baha gets more lines than him, and he's dead.

[Cykeisme]

This..

It's not even how dull and stupid the story is, it's how the demands of story fuck with the feeling that you're just arsing around freely doing random nonsense for people of questionable sanity.

..and this.

The worst thing is that the story and character development is all about the old characters, who we already spent a million years not giving a shit about in the old game, and who are now completely nothing like their one liners and limited expressiveness made them out to be in the first game.

One of the best parts of Borderlands 1 was its complete irreverence. The writing was zany and off its rocker, because it's clear the writers didn't care.
Now it seems like they're trying to be zany, but you can tell that they actually want a serious story, but are trying to keep the zaniness.. simply because BL1 was like that.
The humor peaked in the General Knoxx expansion for BL1, and I haven't checked, but I seriously doubt the same writers are involved.

Secondly, the way the four original heroes from BL1 are treated is downright character assassination. I mean, they had practically no character to begin with, but somehow they managed to ruin whatever little we knew about them.
I'm not just talking about all the blurbs about how the new characters are soooo much more badass (that Wilhelm crap), I'm referring to how they speak and behave, especially Lilith.
Also, from the perspective of game mechanics, the BL1 characters were far more powerful, though if it's only because Gearbox' naive skill design at the time allowed all four of the old characters to be practically invincible with the right builds.


Anyway, with regards to gameplay, they now made it so that being higher level than an enemy does not give you a damage bonus to them. Being lower level does mean you do less damage to the enemy, though. I guess that's their attempt at preventing the whole overlevelling problem for folks that finish all the sidequests.

There's also this retarded thing that no one would ever know unless they read guides: in the NG+, you should not take any of the sidequests that give good item rewards. As in, do not take/start/activate the sidequest. Finish the entire story first, till after you've killed the last boss, THEN take (and do) the sidequests, to get the rewards at Level 50. And yes, aside from being stupid in and of itself, the fact that it is undocumented is also stupid.