The original Borderlands was a game that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s quite uncommon to find RPGs with shooter elements and a very vast world filled with loot. Borderlands felt… different. It had it’s flaws, but it was a unique experience. Borderlands 2 is quite similar, and just as fun.
The sequel is a large improvement over the first game. Correcting many of the problems that were associated with the first game, and adding some new features of it’s own, Borderlands 2 offers a wonderful experience; one that will keep you glued to your seat for quite a while. I suggest you take a break from work or school before getting started with this adventure.
Borderlands 2 has four classes namely the Commando, Siren, Assassin and Gunzerker (pictured below).
As you can notice, the first four are more or less like the classes offered in the first game. They’re different in appearance and action skills this time though. Another class, called the Mechromancer, will be available for download later on October 16th for $9.99 or 800 MS Points for PSN and XBL respectively, unless you pre-ordered the game, in which case you have obtained her already.
The story picks up where the first one left off. Oh, you don’t remember the first story? It doesn’t matter. Borderlands 1 had a very weak and boring story. It’s definitely not worth remembering. This sequel has improved on narration and story-telling, but the core story is still not worth it. Who cares about stories in most loot-driven Western RPG’s anyway? Remember the story to Diablo 3? Yeah, nor do I.
Speaking of Diablo 3, I believe that Gearbox could have learned something off of Blizzard’s game: Independent loot. In Diablo 3, every player received his/her own loot. This, however, is not the case in Borderlands 2. This game goes back to the old ways when loot was shared amongst the players. When you kill an enemy, it’s a race against time to rush towards the dropped weapons and grab them before your enemy does. This can be problematic as most people online tend to pick up whatever loot they find, without caring about whether it’ll be useful to them or not. Beware of Ninjas and lag on this one.
But the amount of loot in this game is just so incredible that you wouldn’t really care who took what. Loot drops very often and it’s easy to find new things. No gamer exaggerates when he/she mentions how much loot there is in this game. Trust me, it is more than enough to drive you and make you go crazy. And just like the tremendous amount of loot, the other content of this game is pretty large too. The entire area is quite diverse and vast, with a variety of enemies and bosses. Quite unfortunately though, there is not much to do except gain loot and kill. I spent most of my time just shooting. Obviously this is what you would expect from a first person shooter RPG, but I was expecting the gameplay to be overhauled in many aspects. But I guess that’s not much of an issue as this point relies heavily upon my personal opinion. Despite gameplay being repetitive, there are various side-quests to enjoy when you don’t feel like following the main story line. Although these side missions are hardly different as they too involve a lot of shooting, they are still fun and rewarding.
Each class is unique and fun to play. Their action skills are quite important and can be improved as the character levels up. These skills are crucial when playing with friends as the enemies get harder and each player has to play his/her part to survive and help others to live as well. Without team work and co-operation, this game can be immensely tough online. But if you play with the right people of the right level and experience, you’ll have a lot of fun. Team co-operation and seeing everyone use their action skills in dangerous moments is fun and adds to the overall fun. I mean, who wouldn’t want partners while shooting everything you lay your fixed eyes on?
One thing Borderlands 2 failed to do was give freedom in customizing character appearances. This feature was not available in Borderlands 1 either, where you could only change the color of the clothes, but Borderlands 2 should have improved on this. After all, when you play online, do you not want your character to look different? Agreed that this is not an MMO and nor is it a Fantasy RPG where armor matters a lot, but even simple appearance changing options would have been appreciated. On the other hand, skill trees are very intriguing. You could spend hours on a skill tree only to restore your skill points and start all over again. This keeps continuing until you’re comfortable with a set of specific skills.
One important aspect of every game is it’s sound. The sound effects were pretty good, but nothing extraordinary. The same goes for the soundtrack as I did not notice anything special that is worth praising. But at the same time, it wasn’t bad. Lets just say it suited the game. Lastly, this game has a lot of humor and this is one of the reasons I enjoyed it. The story was not worth my time, but the humor definitely was.
It all comes down to the final verdict then. Borderlands 2 is a great improvement over it’s prequel. Period.
The Good: The visuals are updated and enhanced, several flaws have been fixed, the online gameplay is fun, quests are rewarding and the amount of variety in loot and enemies is enough to keep you playing for weeks, maybe even months.
The Bad: The game’s story is not of any importance, there is hardly any freedom and character customization and loot sharing is a pain.
In the end, my point is, if you enjoy RPGs which can cause you to lose your job or get bad grades in school, then Borderlands 2 might just be the game for you. Seriously speaking though, fans of the original Boderlands and other Western RPGs will certainly enjoy Borderlands 2. I would personally recommend buying the game on the PC as it looks better (though it leeches a lot of power from your hardware), but purchasing it on the Xbox 360 or the PS3 won’t make much of a difference since the game is entirely the same.
TechDeville awards Borderlands 2 4.5/5 stars.
