I genuinely did not think much of Borderlands before playing this game as I only played it on a whim. Cue me spending the entire night with my eyes glued to the screen. They genuinely need some kind of disclaimer because as someone who has never found much enjoyment in gachas or Action RPGs like Diablo I just could not stop playing this game, the gameplay loop of getting a new cool weapon and scavenging the ground after every fight to see what I got was a winning formula from the start. I'm in the middle of playing BL2 because as much as I enjoyed the main appeal of the series BL1 is extremely flawed in certain aspects and BL2 seems like it's trying to fix them.

I played on the Enhanced Edition which solved certain problems so I can't truly comment on how the original release felt to play. What I can see after experiencing some of BL2 is that I feel like more things could've been improved other than the characters and story + new gameplay features. I really, really enjoyed the more desolate feeling in BL1, you were doing your own thing, traveling to new locales, wondering what kind of places and enemies you would find, while the story and characters were very minimalistic. BL2 and from what I have seen the rest of the games did a 180 on this and I don't know if I really like that. You've got characters glued to your ear through the ECHO which kinda devalues the more explorer vibe I got in the first game. You already started to see this in DLCs like General Knoxx or Claptrap Revolution, so it's not like it came out of nowhere, and I will admit, I am way more invested in the characters in the modern titles but I think it's possible to strike a balance between letting the characters and the world shine for themselves.

I can see why people would just, completely detest this gameplay design and I get them, if you can't get into the loop you can't get into the games period. Refer to me staying awake for a full day glued to my PC to know if it worked for me or not.