So..... many.... guns.......
I've finally reached the stage in my Borderlands 'career' when familiarity hits home, and in the case of the Pre-Sequel, that's a mixture of very good and really frustrating.
I started this almost immediately after finishing Borderlands 2 - both games are in The Handsome Collection which I bought for a stupidly low price a few years ago. With well over 50 hours and no DLC touched on either game, it's been a superb investment, even if neither of the games are perfect.
It's pretty easy to forget that this was a 360 title. That wonderful art style makes it look last-gen, especially with The Handsome Collection's enhanced visuals. It's so pretty, and there's a wider variety of landscapes in this title than the previous 2, as the story focusses on Pandora's moon, Elpis and the orbiting space station, Helios.
The story is great, especially discovering Handsome Jack's backstory. He's comfortably the best character in the game, and missions featuring him are always the highlight. (Although I have to mention the single most amazing side quest I have ever played in a game when a Doctor on Helios asks for your help, and complains the room is a bit stuffy. So opens a window which he promptly gets sucked through and dies - end of mission). Some of the side quests are as good and as fun as the main missions, and fortunately there's a decent variety with them.
Weapon and equipment variety is definitely a step up from the second game, with oxygen masks adding a new dimension to your personal arsenal. Although I did encounter a laser gun which was so stupidly overpowered that the final few bosses proved to be a lot easier than they were intended to be. Fun to use, undoubtedly.
But there are a few major drawbacks to the Pre-Sequel. The main one is the amount of utterly pointless wandering about, backtracking through endless corridors or slowly meandering across the moon's empty, desolate wastelands. Fast Travel points are few and far between, and I must have wasted several hours of my playthrough walking from one end of the map to the other, and all the way back again just to complete a simple side quest, less than 10% of that time spent in actual combat or story. These sections sadly do not recede as the game progresses - the opposite in fact, when more areas become unlocked. Ugh - so much pointless walking around. I do wonder if this is just because this series is 'of an age' and the QoL fixes weren't a thing on release? By the end, I was so bored with the to-ing and fro-ing, pretty landscapes aside. It definitely spoiled my enjoyment of the game and was an unwelcome distraction from what would have been a well paced story.
There were also a few sound glitches, and I don't think they could have been any more annoying! Some electrical current effects kept on playing at a very loud volume, so much so that I had to turn on the subtitles as I couldn't hear the dialogue over the top of it.
The Pre-Sequel also has a LOT of gametime in zero gravity. Sometimes, this is fun. But a lot of the time, it makes it all soooooo slooooooow. Platforming sections can therefore take an age as you slowly jump between chasms and platforms. And with the aforementioned long walking sections, it slows it down even further. Fortunately, Catch-A-Ride stations are more common than Fast Travel stations and zooming around on a moon buggy is always fun.
So this is a mixed bag. It's better than B1 but not as good as B2. I did enjoy it, but my play time would and indeed should have been vastly reduced if it wasn't for the poor level/mission designs. And if that wasn't the case, I might have been less pleased to have finally finished it, and I would have taken a look at the DLC. Looking forward to Borderlands 3 although I need a bit of a break from Pandora after playing 2 pretty hefty and chaotic Borderlands titles in quick succession.
I've finally reached the stage in my Borderlands 'career' when familiarity hits home, and in the case of the Pre-Sequel, that's a mixture of very good and really frustrating.
I started this almost immediately after finishing Borderlands 2 - both games are in The Handsome Collection which I bought for a stupidly low price a few years ago. With well over 50 hours and no DLC touched on either game, it's been a superb investment, even if neither of the games are perfect.
It's pretty easy to forget that this was a 360 title. That wonderful art style makes it look last-gen, especially with The Handsome Collection's enhanced visuals. It's so pretty, and there's a wider variety of landscapes in this title than the previous 2, as the story focusses on Pandora's moon, Elpis and the orbiting space station, Helios.
The story is great, especially discovering Handsome Jack's backstory. He's comfortably the best character in the game, and missions featuring him are always the highlight. (Although I have to mention the single most amazing side quest I have ever played in a game when a Doctor on Helios asks for your help, and complains the room is a bit stuffy. So opens a window which he promptly gets sucked through and dies - end of mission). Some of the side quests are as good and as fun as the main missions, and fortunately there's a decent variety with them.
Weapon and equipment variety is definitely a step up from the second game, with oxygen masks adding a new dimension to your personal arsenal. Although I did encounter a laser gun which was so stupidly overpowered that the final few bosses proved to be a lot easier than they were intended to be. Fun to use, undoubtedly.
But there are a few major drawbacks to the Pre-Sequel. The main one is the amount of utterly pointless wandering about, backtracking through endless corridors or slowly meandering across the moon's empty, desolate wastelands. Fast Travel points are few and far between, and I must have wasted several hours of my playthrough walking from one end of the map to the other, and all the way back again just to complete a simple side quest, less than 10% of that time spent in actual combat or story. These sections sadly do not recede as the game progresses - the opposite in fact, when more areas become unlocked. Ugh - so much pointless walking around. I do wonder if this is just because this series is 'of an age' and the QoL fixes weren't a thing on release? By the end, I was so bored with the to-ing and fro-ing, pretty landscapes aside. It definitely spoiled my enjoyment of the game and was an unwelcome distraction from what would have been a well paced story.
There were also a few sound glitches, and I don't think they could have been any more annoying! Some electrical current effects kept on playing at a very loud volume, so much so that I had to turn on the subtitles as I couldn't hear the dialogue over the top of it.
The Pre-Sequel also has a LOT of gametime in zero gravity. Sometimes, this is fun. But a lot of the time, it makes it all soooooo slooooooow. Platforming sections can therefore take an age as you slowly jump between chasms and platforms. And with the aforementioned long walking sections, it slows it down even further. Fortunately, Catch-A-Ride stations are more common than Fast Travel stations and zooming around on a moon buggy is always fun.
So this is a mixed bag. It's better than B1 but not as good as B2. I did enjoy it, but my play time would and indeed should have been vastly reduced if it wasn't for the poor level/mission designs. And if that wasn't the case, I might have been less pleased to have finally finished it, and I would have taken a look at the DLC. Looking forward to Borderlands 3 although I need a bit of a break from Pandora after playing 2 pretty hefty and chaotic Borderlands titles in quick succession.