TLDR: I loved Borderlands two and I’m going to start a replay with a different character, which i almost never do.
I had fun with Borderlands 1, but was basically pushing through by the end trying not to fall asleep.
B2, on the other hand, I was very engaged in the entire ride through, although it seemed well balanced and the game ended when it should, even including the side quests.
Improvements -
The writing! I think I heard a reference to Anthony Burch writing in Borderlands 2 from hey ass. Whatcha playing episode, and he got some award?
Experience tiers, which I didn’t initially like because it wasn’t explained, but basically the quests are more important than farming enemies for experience, so you get much more engaged with the stories because you’re following quests instead of trying to kill enough boring enemies in the same way to get high enough of a level to destroy future enemies.
In any case, the writing that I did like in Borderlands 1, was perfect in 2. Not too long, always funny, always engaging, every character very well defined, which brings me to my next point:
The voice acting was hilarious and perfect, again, very well defined and idiosyncratic for every character, just so much fun to listen to. Every time handsome Jack pops up. It’s fun to listen to him be an a******.
The quests were so much more satisfying. At the end of the first game, I was basically just following marker to marker without caring what anybody said or what was written down just tapping through to the next wavepoint until the quest was finished.
In Borderlands 2, Even if I accidentally clicked through the introduction to the quest, I would go back and make sure to read because I know that the paragraph introducing and explaining the quest is funny and that the quest is going to be rescuing lab experiments and I have to find a particular valve or putting together a treasure map with a weird lure, rather than just find the bigger bad guy punch him to death.
Driving was huge - I was not into driving in Borderlands 1 and got really bored and irritated every time I had to drive. I felt like the aiming system was complete dog s***, and it was just not very fun to drive around in general, like the handling was terrible.
I loved driving around the Borderlands too and was actively bummed out whenever. I didn’t get a car, but it made perfect sense and they used the car just enough so that the game wasn’t too easy. But you could still boost and race around however you wanted, or chase down a beer van. So much fun driving, such a huge improvement from the first game.
Larger levels with more interesting landscapes in them, each level felt much more unique than the entire The first game to me, like each area had its own style to a degree I hadn’t seen before.
I can’t remember a single place from the first game, but I’m going to remember the different style of the underground bug. Bunker and the dust and all these other places that had an impact on the personality of the game.
Lastly, art is more efficient, not as many bold lines emphasizing the comic book quality, which is carried through more by the personality of the game instead of by the specific art.
I preferred the more subtle humor of the first game, along with the weapons and characters. The only thing I really preferred from the second was auto-pickup of money, which was a huge QOL upgrade.
I think I have fully completed the first one four times. Maybe five?
Huh, I had the opposite reaction.
I enjoyed the jokes in 1, but the subtle humor specifically was so constant in 2 throughout that I paid much closer attention to the mission details, voice acting and pretty much the whole game from start to finish so I wouldn’t miss any asides, references or muttered grumbles.
Definitely agree on qol, auto-pickup of ammo/cash was a good move.
In Borderlands 1 very few NPCs speak, you have to read stuff. In Borderlands 2 everyone is constantly talking, never shutting up. I like both games, but Borderlands 2 can be a bit much sometimes compared to the first game, almost feels flanderised, but I think that actually started in the Borderlands 1 DLCs.
I thought the weapons were a big step down in BL2. I swear 50% of the guns I found were gimmicks (e.g. throw it as a grenade to reload) but not actually all that effective.
Torgue weapons were especially bad. Yeah I know everyone loves Mr. Torgue and explosions are fun, but those guns are so inaccurate they can’t hit anything >2 meters away. I’d take a weapon that can reliably hit a target any day.
The devs also got rid of the Atlas and S&S brands from BL1. Those were almost always my pick unless so it was a real letdown to see them missing in BL2.
Two has better polish, but I think it’s pretty inferior on the technical side. You rarely get good random drops in 2 and the level scaling was awful. One was clearly a lower budget experimental title, but the gameplay loop was tighter and more satisfying than 2.
Yeah this was my experience too. Despite there being “billions of guns”, I rarely found much variety in viable options. I would never get excited about greens dropping; even blues were often ‘meh’ in TVHM. There seemed to be tighter bounds on weapon stats so there really was not much to be excited for in moment-to-moment drops.
This is all besides the observation that some manufacturers tended to be a lot worse than others. Jakobs & Maliwan were leagues ahead of Dahl & Bandit guns, regardless of my character & skills invested in. The other ones fell somewhere in the middle. The few exceptions were unique weapons but those tended to have specific conditions to get which would be the same every playthrough, guaranteed.
As you said, the scaling was worse, which really exacerbated the drop quality problem. It only got worse at higher levels where the number differences in gear from level to level got massive; even if you found something really good, you would need to trade it out soon.
I remember in BL1, there was this one bandit who kept shredding me, like he killed me several times. I was excited to bring him down so I could get his gun (another mechanic I missed from the first game). When I finally did, I was too low level but also was surprised to find it was only green rarity. When I was able to use it though… damn. This thing chewed through ANYTHING and fast, and my SMG ammo just as fast. 😂 The best part was that I got to use it for a long time before it was outclassed.
I liked BL2 and think it had more interesting enemies, areas, and the story was more engaging. I just wish that since it’s a “Looter Shooter”, that the “Looter” part of it was more exciting.
TLDR; Yeah.
You should try the Pre-Sequel! I feel like it further improved on the combat and each of the playable characters is awesome in their own way. At least at the top end, “ultimate vault hunter mode” or whatever it’s called, seemed more balanced in terms of enemy health instead of being reliant on priming every enemy with slag.
Honestly I wanted so badly to like The Pre Sequel but I hated it.
The humour is significantly worse. It seems like it relies on Australian slang or something because a lot of it just didn’t make sense or wasn’t funny to me. They would say stuff that had the timing and tone that I recognized was supposed to be a joke, but it would just fall so flat I couldn’t even tell what the joke was supposed to be.
The movement felt extremely floaty and bad. The only maps where I had any fun were the space station levels where the gravity was normal. I distinctly remember the moment I put the game down and didn’t pick it back up again was when I ran out of content on the Hyperion station, and I knew that if I wanted to advance the story I needed to go back to the moon.
The level design is horrible. In BL1 and 2, I basically never got stuck in level geometry and needed to kill myself to respawn and free myself. But I needed to do this like once every hour or two in TPS. And I only died to falling into death pits rarely in the prior games, while it was probably the number 1 cause of death for me in TPS.
All that being said, I do like the character building and the story of Handsome Jack’s rise to power.
I found it funny as someone from the US. I think there were only a couple of things that relied so heavily on Australian slang.
I also don’t recall ever getting stuck in level geometry.
I found the maps to just be too big. Doing many of the story and side missions are an absolute chore (the Bosun’s ship in particular was a low point in this respect) because of how much running you have to do. At least in 2 the maps were filled with things to do and had varied environments that kept things from feeling same-y. I’ve beaten 2 many times, but never felt the urge to replay TPS. The game just feels like a slog.
