Borderlands 2 Done

Posted on by Nimgimli
Three of the four Vault hunters from the 1st game having a team meeting

This weekend I completed the main campaign of Borderlands 2. There’s not a lot I can say about a game that is this old and that was this popular; everyone who is interested in looter-shooters is probably familiar with the Borderlands series already.

But I still wanted to share what was the good, the bad and the ugly in it for me.

The Good

Well generally it was pretty good. I like playing shooters but not ones that are too realistic. Borderlands fits perfectly in my groove as far as that goes. It’s sharp looking but I never feel like I’m shooting real people. I spent about 35 hours on the character I finished with, and probably a dozen or so more on trying other classes, and I didn’t feel ‘relieved’ to be done with it, like I am with many games. In other words it didn’t feel drawn out to me, and even deep into the game I found little things that surprised and delighted me. I was level 31 when I went into the final boss level and at level 29 or so I got a gun that talked. At first I had no idea where the voice was coming from! I mean, not a big deal but there were lots of similar things that cropped up.

I also LOVED the “Badass” system. This is a series of many, many tasks that you’ll complete just by playing. Each one levels up your ‘badass rating’ and every so often you get a point to spend that will give you some small increase to stat: things like gun damage, or more health, or shield recharge rates. The clever thing here is that these perks apply to ALL your characters meaning if you play through again with a 2nd character it’ll already have a lot of perks waiting. I thought this was a nice feature for someone who wants to get deeply into the game.

Moxxie the very curvy barkeep standing at her post
Did you know Moxxie is the mother of Scooter and Ellie? Or that she was once married to Handsome Jack?!

And I have really come to like these characters. Briefly, in Borderlands 1 you could play as 1 of 4 characters, and they show up in Borderlands 2 as NPCs (three of them are in the image at the top of this post: Mordecai, Lillith and Brick). They are all bigger than life in various ways. When I did a quest for Moxxi and she pulled a long gun out of her cleavage, my inner 14 year old couldn’t help but giggle, though once upon a time I was kind of offended by a lot of these characters; once I got to ‘know’ them that dissipated.

The Bad

This is going to sound strange to a lot of people, but I was playing for the story and the design of the game is pretty bad for that. You frequently have voice-overs from one of the characters and that’s a lot of how the story is told, but you can rarely actually hear them since enemies constantly scream, your own character is “barking” frequently, and of course guns and explosions. If you miss what is said, you’re out of luck. There’s no log or anything, at least that I found. That was one of my biggest issues. I WANTED to hear what the characters had to say!!

The Ugly

One of my issues with Borderlands has always been the tone. Just the crass humor. I mitigated this somewhat by playing Gaige the Mechromancer.  She is a young girl so her voice isn’t grating and her barks are generally not too bad, though for a while she did yell “God! It smells like piss and tacos!” way too often. But mostly she talks about what a good robot pal she has. The only time I got REALLY annoyed was when I was fighting a faction called Tunnel Rats or something like that, and they just SCREAM constantly. They scream when they attack, they scream when they die, they scream all the time in between. The game ALMOST lost me in that section.

The other part that was ‘ugly’ to me were all the containers. I get that this is a looter shooter but why do they feel the need to put 4 crates next to each other instead of one crate with a lot of stuff in it. And why do I have to hold down a button to collect the ammo in these crates if I’m playing solo. I am never not going to take ammo if I have room for it. Guns and gear I can see, but ammo should just jump into my inventory.

And really, that’s about all I have to say. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to get into Borderlands. Atomfall is up next but I do plan to come back to the Borderlands series. I’m debating on if I should play the Pre-Sequel or just move on to Borderlands 3. The vague goal is to be finished with 3 by the time Borderlands 4 comes out in the fall.

15 thoughts on “Borderlands 2 Done”

  1. As someone who played them all, I’d advise you to enjoy the high of completing BL 2 and skip everything else. BL3 is just OK and Pre-Sequel is absolutely abysmal, IMO. Both were attempts to extend the franchise well beyond it’s terminus, and it shows. YMMV, but I am hoping the BL4 is going to be a “return to form”.

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    1. That’s great info, thanks!! Maybe I’ll ‘kill time’ waiting on 4 by running another class through 2!

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      1. Play the DLCs! There is some absolute gems. The Tiny Tina DLC was super cool, and the Torque DLC was hilarious.

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      2. I don’t personally agree with the previous person’s comment. I have played 1 through 3 with all dlc, myself, and quite enjoyed the entire experience.

        Of course, I am a fan of the dumb crass humor, the inane barks of my character, which I think 3 did really well, but that could be bias as ProZD, a favourite YouTube personality and voice actor of mine, voices the Robot Playable Character (I know there’s an actual name, but it’s been a minute.)

        And if you’re in it for the story, 3 has LOADS of random plots and lore splattered throughout using audio logs found rather organically sometimes, and thrown in your throat others. The voice acting is a huge plus.

        Now, Pre Sequel is a really Hit or Miss title with most. From the (admittedly) dry European humor, mediocre voice acting, rather niche mechanics with the O2 Kits and the low grav and the butt slams, which came back in 3, but it’s a decent play. Just… Maybe don’t do all the side content for Pre Sequel. They’re mostly just fetch this, kill that guy, do some weird act for me. Not a whole lot of substance otherwise.

        But yeah, glad you enjoyed playing Gaige. She’s a great time, though I’m a Kreig main myself. MORE BLOOD FOR MY MEAT BICYCLE! Ahem, excuse me.

        As I realize I have rambled far, far to long, I just wish to reiterate, 3 is pretty good, not great, not bad. Pre Sequel is like the fruit salad someone brings to the pot luck. Some people eat it, the rest avoid it like plague.

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      3. Ignore this guy, presequel is an AMAZING game, it’s one of my favorites, it’s just overshadowed by other games because of the lack of DLC, if you play for story definitely play it. And Borderlands 3 isn’t that bad and has lots of important story, it seems like this guys is just kind of bitter and now is giving bad advice to new fans.

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  3. I agree, the humor isn’t that funny. Definitely outdated, but I can see why people liked that aspect of the game so much when it first came out.

    Still though, I was pleasantly surprised that the game isn’t entirely annoying as I thought it would originally be. Handsome Jack is definitely a big part of that. There are only a handful of lines I can remember that made me cringe, but I also did play as Gaige.

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  4. Why didn’t you just adjust the sound setting? That would have solved you biggest complaints about the game

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    1. I tried but there didn’t seem to be different settings for the two kind of voices so they’d still shout over each other. Or maybe I was just being dense and missed something.

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  5. Now the best part comes, the “Tiny Tina’s Attack on Dragon Keep” DLC. One of the best DLC I’ve played.
    It takes all the best parts of BL2 and turns it up to 11.
    There’s also a wealth of other great DLC available.

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  6. I don’t think the pre sequel is as bad as everybody else does. You get a lot of Torgue and I think he is hilarious. Butt slamming with the oz kits is fairly satisfying as well. 3 is fun but the Calypso twins are aggravating and so are their followers. I thoroughly enjoyed my plays with Zane and Fl4k but BL3 pales in comparison to BL2 overall.

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  7. Originally started playing BL2 Co-op with a friend and fell in love with it way long ago. Enjoyed so much I ditched my pal and played solo. I loved my FPS and other online shooters and was enjoying the solidarity playing solo.

    I liked the 1 or 2 characters I used, I did not use them all. I believe I used the Assassin mostly, and I believe he made a brief cameo in BL3.

    The boss fights (not vault bosses) in BL2 were more fun and involved vs 3. The loot and system was all new to me in BL2 (2012’sh) and I had never played a FPS w a loot + RPG like system. Felt like Diablo 2/3 w guns and obviously fresher graphics.

    BL3 was just disappointing to me and I have not tried the prequel or Tiny Tina since I keep reading horrible reviews. BL2 had some balls pardon my French, at least it felt so 12+ years ago. BL3 felt like I don’t know, I’ll just say softer. And the villains in BL3 were absolutely lame.

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  8. Loved Mecromancer, but I think my favorite BL2 character was Axton, his twin shielded missile launchers are an absolute game changer, you can pop 2 shield turrets or keep cycling 1 pretty much all the time. Turrets can be placed on any surface, throw the up on walls to get better angle on enemies, while also protecting you and your party. I would say if you are going to play another town, pick Axton.

    BL3 I love the beast master. Everyone I’ve ever played with has used Moze, so I never have, but Moze is an absolute power house with her Iron Bear. In case you needed to be sold on her more, she can launch freaking nukes…

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