One of the best video games of all time.

Borderlands 2: GOTY Edition is a remastered bundle of 2 and all of its DLCs. Its a fantastic sequel and step up from Borderlands 1 and as a sequel it improves on almost all accounts and more.

Gameplay: Borderlands 2 steps up in almost every way from the first game. This game’s combat and gameplay style is very similar to the first game with a few minor tweaks to keep it running smooth. Much like in the first game this is an open world RPG, looter shooter where you go from area to area doing quests and looting the map for better guns and gear. You pick from 4 different characters (plus some cool DLC characters) and can play this game entirely 4 player co-op or solo. The level up system and skill tree is very similar to the first game with how it works, they now added challenge tokens and challenges that allow you to upgrade things like your health and damage as well. A new gameplay feature to BL2 is the inclusion of Eridium which is a new rare purple currency you find throughout the game to upgrade your ammo and backpack slots whereas in the first game this was done via claptrap missions. The combat gets better with an all-new variety of enemies like different types of new bandits, creatures and loader bots to fight. The new way we fight enemies in this game with elemental weapons was a huge step up as well and made for a much more fun and satisfying play style.

Graphics, Voice Acting, Music: A lot of the much-needed changes came for the visual art style in this game. The game is still a comic book, cell shaded game but a big complaint with the first game everything was a baron waste land with little room for color or interesting environments. This game brings in beautiful and vastly different environments with, Cities, Green pastures, Oasis Desserts and even Ice and frozen areas. My personal favorite area was the Caustic Cavern which had green rivers of acid and gold bundles everywhere. It made for a fun map sweep and grind to sweep the area of its resources and do quests. The voice acting is much better this time around with characters like claptrap being much funnier this time around and people, like the new villain Handsome Jack giving incredible performances. The music and environmental sounds and themes are all a huge step up as well with lots of fun and catchy themes coming through the mix. The main song from 'The Heavy' is great and fits borderlands so well.

Story/ No spoilers: The story continues after the events of the first game some years later, on the bandit planet of Pandora with an Eridium event erupting from the planet and bringing in a corporation called Hyperion with a new villain, Handsome Jack. Handsome Jack has to be one of the all-time best villains in a video game. He's funny, tragic, evil and it comes as easy to see his perspective on things and how the outside world sees him as the hero. Very cool story telling stuff and honestly, I'm not sure if borderlands will ever be able to keep a good story like this going into other games. I don't usually try to over hype games when I don't need to but let me put it to you this way, I didn't play this game with friends or when it came out. I played it years later not knowing anything about it and It's probably one of my all-time favorite games and I'm not a huge RPG kinda guy. This game is fantastic and the DLCS are just as amazing, can’t recommend this game enough. I don't want to spoil much more about it than this so go play it, especially if you loved BD1 or like RPG looter shooters! Overall, aside from some minor glitches and maybe 2 crashes id give this game a 9.5/10

Had to go back deep in my steam library to find my time on this game but man I fucking adore this game. With a package that is consistently on sale and comes with so much content packed in it. I think this game genuinely is such an amazing video game, and I think some of it is the writing and I very much emphasize some. I think time has been the most evil to this game's writing more than any part of it with very old canned pop culture references that were relevant in 2012. I think also even with the knowledge of said references for back then I think the writing overall is pretty weak because of said dialogue. With some jokes being absolute hits but thats only some of the jokes and a small amount. The Handsome Jack spoon story is a top 3 video game joke. The amount of customization that's on offer for build crafting every single character and the absolute plethora of end game content. With Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragonkeep being one of the best dlcs ever made for a video game. There is no doubt why this game is my favorite one in the series.

Started playing this game in maybe 2015 after I bought a loose ex-rental copy, played the shit out of it, loved it, thought it was wayyyy better than BL1.
Turns out that copy of the game was the wrong reigon to play DLC so I had to beg ma to buy the GOTY / season pass version on PSN when it was $20aud. From that point on it was all I played till maybe 2018 and I still play it occasionally.

There is so much SHIT to do, the art is good, the dificulty is tollerable and expects you to do SOME homework and the community always documents where to find shit and how. It lets you build characters how you want in any way you want. PS3 version ran like ass and conked out my whole ass PS3 at times tho.
I'll probably do another playthru soon.

Almost a perfect sequel. I'm very, very late to the party with Borderlands having only bought the first game as well as The Handsome Collection a couple of years back (for a ridiculously low price), and it subsequently gathered dust on the shelf (metaphorically, nearly all digital now!). Having found the first Borderlands pretty good but very, very samey and overly long, I wasn't massively keen to start this and it became a proper 'list of shame' title.

Well I should have started it much sooner, because it's great. The unforgiving landscapes of Pandora from the first game make a return, but thankfully the scenery is much more varied, always making use of the gorgeous art style. Optimised for the new consoles, it looks stunning - hard to believe it's a 360 game..Other improvements include the NPCs, the story, the weapon variety and - most importantly - the gameplay. It's a wonderfully entertaining romp, it's funny, it's violent, it's chaotic. I got so much more from talking to other characters who play a far bigger role, and some of the side missions are just as fun as the main campaign ones.

In fact, I genuinely can't think of a single area where Borderlands 2 DOESN'T improve on the original. A few niggling issues remain - more on those in a moment - but everything I enjoyed in the first game is ramped up several notches more, it looks, sounds, feels and plays better.

But it's not without it's issues - hardly stinging criticism of a game that's more than a decade old now, that's progress. Some of the missions require a lot of backtracking back to a fast travel station in order to complete them which is a proper pain - I must have lost several hours just walking back across familiar terrain just to turn in an objective. Also, the inventory system is better than in B1, but still rather cumbersome. I'm not sure what the answer is to this, because the looting and amazing variation in weapons is such a key part of the whole series. There's just so much of it!

Also worth pointing out how amazingly good value The Handsome Collection is. As well as this, it also includes The pre-sequel game and ALL the DLC for both titles. And it cost me about £10 in a sale. It took me around 35 hours to see the credits roll, and I've not touched the DLC or the pre-sequel. Not bad for a tenner.

Important to note that I played the entirety of this in single player. In fact, I'm yet to experience anything Borderlands in multiplayer where I'm sure it's even better. But even as a single player experience, this is a quality game that was a lot of fun to play through.

On to Borderlands 3 once I've cleared a few more titles from my backlog. Maybe I'll find a friend to play that with me?

- Can't track more than one quest at a time.
- The map, and especially the inventory system, are horrible on PC. Might be better with a controller.
- You drive vehicles a lot. The vehicles are very floaty, and light. You turn by moving the camera where you want to go, which sucks, but it's also on a delay. You'll get stuck and drive off into walls and off ledges a lot.
- Lots of backtracking and spending ages just running back and forth across levels with enemies way below you.
- Terrible writing and annoying characters. Even if you like it and the cringe humour, you won't get to experience it. It's barely audible over the shooting, and is constantly interrupted.