So I was asked by Jdodson to give my thoughts and opinions on borderlands 2 after playing just about everything the game has to offer. I am a level 50. I've never cheated and played it duo with my cousin and we have everything. This has NO SPOILERS. It's simply an objective look at the game as a whole.
Pros:
+Better Characters
+More Varied Environments
+Better Enemies
+More Challenging
Cons:
-Change to the gun system (It's also a plus but let me describe it later in the review)
-A few broken new mechanics (completely objective)
-Not as much endgame as I feel was promised
So let's start off with characters. The characters this time around are quite humorous. Tiny Tina herself is plain hilarious. There are a lot more jokes this time around and their all truly "lol" worthy. The main disappointment in this is it seems some characters weren't given truly enough time to shine at how funnier they actually are. I'd of wished to hear more from ALL of the characters.
The environments are a thousand times better then borderlands 1 and in this genre. This is not a straight up comparison between things better then in 1. This adds variety to a seriously lacking environment feel for fps games lately. It's not just urban and post apocalyptic. It has a bit of everything.
Enemies are smarter, more strategic and plain tougher. This comes from a variety of new "movesets" some have to just plain out ridiculous attacks. This is great for those who truly enjoy one of the last good co op games left. Playing by yourself this might become more of a con.
For challenge see above. It's more scaled for multiple people this time around.
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Now here is my biggest complaint. This will be somewhat hard to understand if you have not played the first one. Let me break it down some though. So they added new things that guns can have. Such as slag or multiple barrels. Many very awesome things. Now here is the bad. They tried to make the guns more unique but instead of creating ONLY new things to make the guns different. They took a LOT of the already existing properties and applied them to manufacturer type. This means you will not see auto pistols from the likes of the original borderlands. Rate of Fire and accuracy and all of those variables are tied into the manufacturer themselves, very heavily in-fact. Explosive guns? They are ALL torgue guns. You will never be able to find and explosive variant in the gun type you like the most. Me and my cousin talked very heavily on this and both decided that it was for the worst in terms of variety. This was a great plan and concept but, it needed to be applied to only new variables with the guns to not limit the new types available. What instead has happened is the new variables are what make up the gun differences and the old variables are now just the manufacturer.
Amp damage from certain shields has been a hot topic. I won't discuss the thing here because of spoilers but lets just say there is a shield that is very abusive and breaks the game. I side with those who want the best stuff and simply not using it is not really the solution I would have liked to see. Shotguns are also largely the main damaging gun just due to how their damage is calculated out.
I would have hoped to see a lot more post game bosses. However perhaps they will plan this only through the DLC. This may change in time but I simply would have liked to see it at the start before the DLC. Just a matter of preference.
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Overall this is and amazingly well done co-op game and I had a blast playing through it with my cousin. No one who enjoys playing with their friends should pass this up. Games with as good a co op as this do not come along very often.
Pros:
+Better Characters
+More Varied Environments
+Better Enemies
+More Challenging
Cons:
-Change to the gun system (It's also a plus but let me describe it later in the review)
-A few broken new mechanics (completely objective)
-Not as much endgame as I feel was promised
So let's start off with characters. The characters this time around are quite humorous. Tiny Tina herself is plain hilarious. There are a lot more jokes this time around and their all truly "lol" worthy. The main disappointment in this is it seems some characters weren't given truly enough time to shine at how funnier they actually are. I'd of wished to hear more from ALL of the characters.
The environments are a thousand times better then borderlands 1 and in this genre. This is not a straight up comparison between things better then in 1. This adds variety to a seriously lacking environment feel for fps games lately. It's not just urban and post apocalyptic. It has a bit of everything.
Enemies are smarter, more strategic and plain tougher. This comes from a variety of new "movesets" some have to just plain out ridiculous attacks. This is great for those who truly enjoy one of the last good co op games left. Playing by yourself this might become more of a con.
For challenge see above. It's more scaled for multiple people this time around.
-----------
Now here is my biggest complaint. This will be somewhat hard to understand if you have not played the first one. Let me break it down some though. So they added new things that guns can have. Such as slag or multiple barrels. Many very awesome things. Now here is the bad. They tried to make the guns more unique but instead of creating ONLY new things to make the guns different. They took a LOT of the already existing properties and applied them to manufacturer type. This means you will not see auto pistols from the likes of the original borderlands. Rate of Fire and accuracy and all of those variables are tied into the manufacturer themselves, very heavily in-fact. Explosive guns? They are ALL torgue guns. You will never be able to find and explosive variant in the gun type you like the most. Me and my cousin talked very heavily on this and both decided that it was for the worst in terms of variety. This was a great plan and concept but, it needed to be applied to only new variables with the guns to not limit the new types available. What instead has happened is the new variables are what make up the gun differences and the old variables are now just the manufacturer.
Amp damage from certain shields has been a hot topic. I won't discuss the thing here because of spoilers but lets just say there is a shield that is very abusive and breaks the game. I side with those who want the best stuff and simply not using it is not really the solution I would have liked to see. Shotguns are also largely the main damaging gun just due to how their damage is calculated out.
I would have hoped to see a lot more post game bosses. However perhaps they will plan this only through the DLC. This may change in time but I simply would have liked to see it at the start before the DLC. Just a matter of preference.
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Overall this is and amazingly well done co-op game and I had a blast playing through it with my cousin. No one who enjoys playing with their friends should pass this up. Games with as good a co op as this do not come along very often.
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I think I agree with you on gun type. For me it wasn't game breaking, but it wasn't as cool as before in the way you describe. It just seems strange to have all fire damage guns be of a certain type only.
Can you re-play most of the higher level bosses again?
you can replay every boss in the game again. This goes for every part in the game too. If at any time you want to go face the first boss again. You can just go back to the area their in and they respawn.
edit: Also on gun type. I just want to reiterate. It WAS a good idea on their part but again. They needed to make them unique with completely NEW variables. Not old ones that already existed. It got rid of gun types that already existed. There are more guns but in reality it seems limited like theres even less. Hopefully they combine the old and the new in a borderlands 3.
Guns: that makes sense.
Boss Spawns: One of the biggest let downs of the original Borderlands what that I couldn't come back and re-play the rack hive boss fight in the main campaign.
Ha I totally agree. Me and my cousin are heavy heavy borderlands players. We both talked about that same fight numerous times while playing through borderlands 2. He looked over my review after I wrote it and totally agrees with it all. I wrote it based on conversations we had as we played through the whole thing. We always talked about what could be better in certain areas. There's just not a lot of co op games left so critiquing the ones left is important.
I agree. Diablo 3 has co-op and its a fun part of that game and BL2 shines with it.
More co-op the better.