I grew up playing the first 2 Borderlands games. I absolutely love them. I have nearly 200 hours in the original and nearly 500 in Borderlands 2. I’ve recently gotten a group of friends together and we’re going through the entirety of the Borderlands series starting with the first one. We recently beat it and let me tell you, nostalgia can only do so much. While I actually did have a blast playing this game with my friends, it’s mostly due to the friend group and my nostalgia for this series.
TLDR at the end
The Issues
Despite brandishing the name “Enhanced edition” the game still has plenty of issues. All of us experienced framerate issues, connection issues, and just overall jank. There’d be times where one of us had to restart due to us loading into a new area and our frames would just tank into oblivion. Other times it’s just the longer the session the more likely the framerate would start to drop. I’m unsure why. There is also a latency bug with the game that thankfully there was a steam forums about. The bug being that even if you all mute and disable microphones, it’s still transmitting your mics, or registering it somehow and that causes unbearable lag. You have to go into a file to manually disable the voice chat completely to fix this issue. The steam forum for better understanding of the issue if you find yourself reading this while having issues playing the game.
Steam forum fix for co-op latency issue
Those were the most consistent technical issues. However my brother in law (one of the people I played with and who I played these games with when I was younger) was having issues with just the sound playing for the game. Unfortunately I don’t remember the cause or how he resolved that issue since that happened when we started and he found a fix himself.
Some various not as common bugs included items falling through maps. Some items stats disappearing and reducing to level 0 (displayed with having no level) when dropped. Characters occasionally t-posing and more.
This doesn’t even really touch on just the game itself. The game itself definitely feels a little crusty to play nowadays. The gunplay feels very stiff and inaccurate, the base weapon sway, especially for snipers, is ridiculous, the loot drops were wildly bad. We would get items that were nearly 10-15 levels below our current level dropped sometimes and if you dared try an encounter even just 1 level above you, you’d get rolled. Now I remember that last one from playing Borderlands 1 back in the day, but I never remember the loot being so bad. I’m not sure if they changed that or not. Memory is hazy since I played Borderlands 1 around release and never went back after Borderlands 2 released. The car physics are also bad but in my opinion they’re so bad that they circle back to being good. But unless you’re like me and my group and you find your car clipping a rock and it going flying or crashing into each other and getting the cars stuck fun then you’ll probably not enjoy it. But to me honestly the car physics are a plus.
Onto the good
Despite all that, I had an absolute blast revisiting it. Borderlands 1 is really interesting to revisit after so long because it hadn’t really found its identity fully. A lot of the humor, while I wouldn’t exactly call it subtle by normal means, was very subtle compared to the other games in the series. It hadn’t really turned into the memey mess that Borderlands has become. And depending on who you ask that can be a good or a bad thing. But it does become more fully fleshed out the longer you play and especially in the DLCs. I will also say that I think the original Borderlands has some of my favorite DLCs. We didn’t actually play them all this time so I can’t fully speak to them but General Knoxx has my favorite loot room of all the DLCs I’ve played, the Ned’s zombie DLC is very fun and goofy. The claptrap revolution DLC is super funny considering every enemy “becomes” a claptrap and the Mad Moxie DLC is a very fun arena DLC. We only revisited the zombie DLC however, as when we beat the final boss everyone kind of agreed that we’d just like to move onto Borderlands 2. Which can’t really fault anyone for that.
There are also some really cool parts in the base game. One of my favorite parts and one of the first times I’ve ever seen a scene like this in a game (I know it’s not the first to do something like this) but when the Guardians are fighting the Crimson Lance at the final push of the game. Those final areas feel really fun and hectic and it’s really cool to experience what is essentially a 3 way fight between you, the lance and the guardians. Again not the first game to ever have a scene like this but I believe it was my first time experiencing one in a game and it has just left a mark on me.
Final Thoughts
With all that being said, I’m not really sure I can recommend this game. Really playing Borderlands 2 no matter what way you look at it will be a much better time. Better gunplay, better skill trees, better story, more customization, really finds its stride with comedy despite it becoming more memey, and better archetypes with the gun companies. The gun companies in the first one more so just felt like different stats. I think the biggest differences you could feel were like the Jacobs and Maliwan guns. Jacobs because they would do ridiculous damage as their slogan was 1 shot 1 kill. Maliwan because they were always elemental and had high elemental effects. In Borderlands 2 all the gun companies have dramatic differences and make them feel that much more unique and zany. Even starting with Borderlands 2 you won’t lose out on any story. Most of what happens in Borderlands 1 is either explained or just some background lore that doesn’t really matter. I don’t really see any reason you’d choose to play Borderlands 1 over Borderlands 2. Unless you have extreme nostalgia for Borderlands 1 and didn’t like 2 for whatever reason. Especially with all the technical issues. Which honestly really is a shame because like I said from the start, I do love this game and I did have a good time.
TLDR
I had a fun time but I’m nostalgic for this game, if you have no nostalgia for this game I would not recommend you play this and would suggest you start at Borderlands 2.
TLDR at the end
The Issues
Despite brandishing the name “Enhanced edition” the game still has plenty of issues. All of us experienced framerate issues, connection issues, and just overall jank. There’d be times where one of us had to restart due to us loading into a new area and our frames would just tank into oblivion. Other times it’s just the longer the session the more likely the framerate would start to drop. I’m unsure why. There is also a latency bug with the game that thankfully there was a steam forums about. The bug being that even if you all mute and disable microphones, it’s still transmitting your mics, or registering it somehow and that causes unbearable lag. You have to go into a file to manually disable the voice chat completely to fix this issue. The steam forum for better understanding of the issue if you find yourself reading this while having issues playing the game.
Steam forum fix for co-op latency issue
Those were the most consistent technical issues. However my brother in law (one of the people I played with and who I played these games with when I was younger) was having issues with just the sound playing for the game. Unfortunately I don’t remember the cause or how he resolved that issue since that happened when we started and he found a fix himself.
Some various not as common bugs included items falling through maps. Some items stats disappearing and reducing to level 0 (displayed with having no level) when dropped. Characters occasionally t-posing and more.
This doesn’t even really touch on just the game itself. The game itself definitely feels a little crusty to play nowadays. The gunplay feels very stiff and inaccurate, the base weapon sway, especially for snipers, is ridiculous, the loot drops were wildly bad. We would get items that were nearly 10-15 levels below our current level dropped sometimes and if you dared try an encounter even just 1 level above you, you’d get rolled. Now I remember that last one from playing Borderlands 1 back in the day, but I never remember the loot being so bad. I’m not sure if they changed that or not. Memory is hazy since I played Borderlands 1 around release and never went back after Borderlands 2 released. The car physics are also bad but in my opinion they’re so bad that they circle back to being good. But unless you’re like me and my group and you find your car clipping a rock and it going flying or crashing into each other and getting the cars stuck fun then you’ll probably not enjoy it. But to me honestly the car physics are a plus.
Onto the good
Despite all that, I had an absolute blast revisiting it. Borderlands 1 is really interesting to revisit after so long because it hadn’t really found its identity fully. A lot of the humor, while I wouldn’t exactly call it subtle by normal means, was very subtle compared to the other games in the series. It hadn’t really turned into the memey mess that Borderlands has become. And depending on who you ask that can be a good or a bad thing. But it does become more fully fleshed out the longer you play and especially in the DLCs. I will also say that I think the original Borderlands has some of my favorite DLCs. We didn’t actually play them all this time so I can’t fully speak to them but General Knoxx has my favorite loot room of all the DLCs I’ve played, the Ned’s zombie DLC is very fun and goofy. The claptrap revolution DLC is super funny considering every enemy “becomes” a claptrap and the Mad Moxie DLC is a very fun arena DLC. We only revisited the zombie DLC however, as when we beat the final boss everyone kind of agreed that we’d just like to move onto Borderlands 2. Which can’t really fault anyone for that.
There are also some really cool parts in the base game. One of my favorite parts and one of the first times I’ve ever seen a scene like this in a game (I know it’s not the first to do something like this) but when the Guardians are fighting the Crimson Lance at the final push of the game. Those final areas feel really fun and hectic and it’s really cool to experience what is essentially a 3 way fight between you, the lance and the guardians. Again not the first game to ever have a scene like this but I believe it was my first time experiencing one in a game and it has just left a mark on me.
Final Thoughts
With all that being said, I’m not really sure I can recommend this game. Really playing Borderlands 2 no matter what way you look at it will be a much better time. Better gunplay, better skill trees, better story, more customization, really finds its stride with comedy despite it becoming more memey, and better archetypes with the gun companies. The gun companies in the first one more so just felt like different stats. I think the biggest differences you could feel were like the Jacobs and Maliwan guns. Jacobs because they would do ridiculous damage as their slogan was 1 shot 1 kill. Maliwan because they were always elemental and had high elemental effects. In Borderlands 2 all the gun companies have dramatic differences and make them feel that much more unique and zany. Even starting with Borderlands 2 you won’t lose out on any story. Most of what happens in Borderlands 1 is either explained or just some background lore that doesn’t really matter. I don’t really see any reason you’d choose to play Borderlands 1 over Borderlands 2. Unless you have extreme nostalgia for Borderlands 1 and didn’t like 2 for whatever reason. Especially with all the technical issues. Which honestly really is a shame because like I said from the start, I do love this game and I did have a good time.
TLDR
I had a fun time but I’m nostalgic for this game, if you have no nostalgia for this game I would not recommend you play this and would suggest you start at Borderlands 2.