u/jakerfv

Being in High School when Borderlands 2 came out, the game was the talk of many. It made the rounds during video game school discussions with every other big-name FPS at the time. Halo, Bioshock, Far Cry (3), and of course, Call of Duty (MW2 and Black Ops 1) were the most common. But Borderlands kind of simmered in the background as a fun Xbox Live or PlayStation co-op game. "Fun with friends", you'd hear on any review site or defender of the games, seemingly. Well, anything is more fun with friends, and unfortunately, this is what put me off really giving the games a chance. In reality, Borderlands 1 and 2 are extremely thin on co-op play content, though, in fairness to 1, 2 was heavily pushed on its co-op angle. These games are fun but extremely flawed FPS action RPGs, which is what they should have been marketed as in an ideal world. If you like Diablo 2, you'll like a lot of what Borderlands does, and you'll also hate its regressions compared to a PC ARPG from the late 90s.

For starters, I'd like to talk about Borderlands 1, which always had more appeal to me since I picked it up around the time I got big into PC gaming in the early 2010s during my first Steam sale (IIRC). BL1 has limited enemy variety, limited weaponry, some terrible pacing, but there is an immense charm in walking around a very quiet, empty wasteland with nothing but the music strumming along in the background and the occasional brief dialogue/cutscene to break up the silence. Aside from the shooting and vehicle additions, Fallout New Vegas is just a superior title despite differing in genre focus. It's arguably a better ARPG in general since you not only get an interesting variety of weapons but also equipment. Though the goofiness of Borderlands adds some flair, it's still a highly repetitive experience with some sunk cost. Oh, and the ending feels anti-climactic. Kind of a neat subversion of expectations otherwise, but still anti-climactic.

Borderlands 2 improves every aspect, but the repetition is still the biggest problem, and it's why I'm writing this. The co-op aspects are stronger than I had previously judged it for, but there are still big limitations. Every mainstream RPG just does not like letting the player break the game or have agency. You get an item that gives you points in a skill tree several levels down, as long as you have the item equipped? Awesome! Except those skill points don't work until you have at least one talent point in the skill, which could be in an entirely different tree, and basically require 5-10 levels. So you can't even skip old talents either in favor of the more interesting ones, because the game wants you to play the grind. The endless, boring, fetch quest grind. Bullet spongey enemies, leveling taking way too long, boring skill tree points (+3% to weapon damage, you've seen this shit a ton). Despite being an ACTION RPG, it's got such boring RPG talents for your combat. One thing that could've really fixed it was gear drops, not just weapons. More damage, more cool abilities and passives, more stuff in general instead of just guns. Give me armor that provides this stuff on top of my guns. Because the guns will get stale. Get a legendary gun drop? Great, except we're playing an FPS, so that means you'll be begging for a different gun after 2 hours, but since the enemies are sponges, you'll want something better than what you have, which will be another 2 hours, at minimum.

The progression is probably the worst aspect of these games. The level grinding takes ages, and it's such a drag. A lot of these grindy systems in Borderlands have manifested their way into other games in the form of these Console MMO FPS titles like Destiny, and they are just so fucking bad compared to an actual MMO. In World of Warcraft Vanilla, I can play 20 hours, get to level 20 as a warlockk (mods, please don't delete posts for having generic names like "warloc*" in the entry, its a class, not a new game, lol), have 3 minions with their own situational utility, have done all kinds of cool quests with lore, gotten interesting gear which might include class gear too, done 3 or 4 challenging dungeons with friends, probably 6-7 locations with unique biomes. In the co-op aspect, I can create healthstones, soulstones, and have my voidwalker off-tank certain mob pulls in groups. I have so much damn utility in that class, and solo-leveling is still rewarding and fun, not to mention the entire MMO aspect. Auction houses, professions, and trading. World pvp and battlegrounds. Social interaction and Guilds.

In a game like Borderlands 2, 15 hours gets me to level 20, but I'm so much worse off. I have a few passives for my Siren that increase gun damage. I have 1 active ability with a few unique passives, 1 grenade I can use at a time, and a handful of guns I can switch between. Different biomes, but they all feel the same; the quests are just as repetitive as they were 10 hours ago outside the main storyline, and there's no incentive to play with a group. The co-op? I can revive people or slightly reduce their active ability cooldown. That's it. The co-op marketing + pacing feels like a ploy to keep you in the game as long as possible to sell more copies. "You can get 100 hours out of it, it's got millions of guns, it's fun with friends, buy 3 more copies! Buy the DLC to get even more out of it!"

It's infuriating because I like the games on some fundamental level. The shooting is generally solid. I think it's a problem that this is the only ARPG FPS that's worth playing. If they could just make this game but with more gear (not just guns) and an end-game with team coordination, that would be so goddamn sick. Instead, it's a pretty fun but highly repetitive ARPG shooter that I can't stomach for more than 2 hours at a time. I will say, BL2, is very fun when it wants to be; the main quest missions are generally cool, and the bosses are great. But you have to grind on boring fetch quests for a bit to have "fun".