Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Reviews

Good shooter looter game. A worthy addition to the Borderlands franchise.

The game mechanics are unique among the Borderlands series and gave me Quake vibes early on which made me happy. It also has my second favorite DLC for the series in all the games. It was a separate Australian team that made this and they got released before doing the last 2 DLCs which makes the game shorter than I wanted. The character development is on par with the other games as is the story. One thing that bothered me was level design... There was more going through the same levels forward and backward which made the scenery a bit repetitive and the exploration minimal compared to the other games.

This is easily the weakest of the mainline Borderlands games. Had this been the first BL games I played, I would not have bothered with the other games in the series. First, managing your oxygen levels and trying to control your jumps in a low-gravity environment isn't fun. Second, and most significantly, the enemies are relentless. Regardless of how strong my shield is and the level of my character, I always get killed with just a few shots of the enemy. I've died more in this game than any other BL game, and it's not even close. I got so frustrated that I don't even bother with optional missions or exploring the map. This game feels like a homework assignment. Skip this entry, and play any other game in the series.

Damn, not only was this game cat shit. But now you want me to give you all my info? Want my kidneys while you're at it? Fuck you Gearbox. And DEFINITELY fuck you Randy. Thinking I'm gonna pay 100 bucks for Borderlands 4 because "Only a true fan would buy it." can this company die off already?

I was excited to replay the older Borderlands titles, until I saw the Terms of Service. Dear 2K, Who hurt you? Borderlands IP is able to print money based on its history and fanbase, the new ToS is extremely unnecessary, aggressive, and frankly completely changed my mind about purchasing the upcoming title. Maybe Borderlands 4 will be good? I know I won't find out...

Take-Two and 2K games have updated all their games Terms of Service, turning this game as well as all of their other games into literal spyware. Important Info in Terms of Service: • Mods are a bannable offense • Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable • Forced arbitration clause and a waiver of class action and jury trial rights for all users residing in the United States and any other territory other than Australia, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, or The Territories of The European Economic Area • You can be banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers • Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC Collected Data Types: • Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address • Protected Characteristics: Age and gender • Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information • Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address • Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications • Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls) • Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest • Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting) • Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality

They may have overpromised, but the gameplay is different enough from BL2 to satisfy. Enjoyable story and pretty good humor.

https://www.take2games.com/privacy/en-US/ Categories of Information Collected: The type of information we collect depends on how you use the Services. Generally, we collect the following information: Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address Protected Characteristics: Age and gender Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls) Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting) Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality. How We Use Information and Our Legal Grounds We use the information we collect within Take-Two as follows, pursuant to various legal bases: Business Purposes: Provide the Services and support; fulfill orders and requests; improve the Services and our business; develop new products and services; enhance your experience on the Services; protect the security for our users, employees, facilities, and Services; and develop internal marketing and demographic studies Commercial Purposes: Market and advertise our and our business partners' products and services; send you promotional materials; and administer promotional activities or events We also use your information as permitted by law.

I rate Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel 4/5. This is a good action game overall but you’ll have the most fun if you focus on the game’s main plot and less on the often poorly designed optional side missions. The DLC content is also good overall. I played through the game single-player using the DLC Doppleganger character which I found had particularly funny and smart dialogue. This is the same character who shows up later as an NPC (non-player character) in the very good Borderlands 3 DLC: Moxie’s Heist of the Handsome Jackpot. If you have not yet played Borderlands 2, you should definitely play this Pre-Sequel first as it will clarify and expand on a huge number of plot elements from that game and help Borderlands 2 make a lot more sense than it otherwise would. Unfortunately, back when I played Borderlands 2, this prequel game (taking place between the events of Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2) wasn’t out yet. I really wish this game had come out earlier because when I played Borderlands 2 I often felt lost at sea when it came to having any in-depth understanding of the plot or setting. If you have already played Borderlands 2 and even Borderlands 3 like I had, this Pre-Sequel game is still good to play if you like Borderlands games. It has frenetic action, good dialogue, a somewhat interesting plot, cool space environments and more. Be warned however, The Pre-Sequel is harder than the other Borderlands games, the aiming is a little more finicky, the level design can be extremely confusing, the game design is less hub-based (you will often be gone from the in-game town for long stretches of time) and the boss fights are particularly HARD. The DLC mission is good too but it is even harder than the main game. Good luck. Good things about Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: +Through it all, The Pre-Sequel has the same basic action-oriented Borderlands gameplay you find in any other Borderlands game. You do missions which generally cause you to go to someplace, shoot at some enemies, grab some item(s) and then you turn the missions in. You upgrade to better weapons and items which you got from either killing enemies or buying them in overpriced in-game vending machines or as rewards on missions. You earn XP over time and your character levels up, gets an XP point and you spend that point in the level-up menu to expand your character’s abilities. Hopefully you got this game at least partially because you want to do this some more. It’s a fun and classic (though somewhat repetitive) cycle of gameplay. By the time I was done with this game, I had leveled up 35 times. +Responsive though fairly basic controls which can all be easily rebound to custom keys in the game’s menus. The game recognized my off-brand generic gaming mouse’s additional buttons, without a problem. You’ll need to get used to floaty, low-gravity space action though (it’s a lot like playing UT2004 in low gravity mode). If you like that, you’ll like this game fairly well. If you hate low gravity combat where everyone can jump high and float around, well, you’ll probably hate this entire game. +Good sound effects overall. I was particularly impressed with all the different reloading sounds which go with all the different weapons’ interesting (and sometimes comically silly) reloading animations. +Good dialogue and funny jokes throughout. I had a heck of a time understanding the Australian enemies (and their slang) on the moon but they were still fun and interesting to hear. The things Jack (the guy who gives you orders) says to you seem perfectly right for his character and all the lines I heard had fairly good, dry-humor, comic action-game voice acting. I found all the dialogue of my chosen Doppleganger character to be particularly funny and it added a lot of interest to the overall game. Of course, if you use a different character, the dialogue might not wind up being as interesting or funny, lacking the whole body-double, quasi-mistaken identity aspect of humor which the Doppleganger character brings to the situation. For my experience however, the dialogue and general Borderlands back-story information made the game well worth the trouble of playing through it. +With the DLC, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel has a good variety of characters to choose from. +As is true of other Borderlands games, this game is fairly long. It took me roughly 64 hours to play through the Pre-Sequel just once. Compare that to most other games which can be played through in roughly 8 hours. +Impressively beautiful graphics throughout. Good variety of graphics settings for the often comically huge amount of particulate debris the game’s battles (and Nvidia PhysX effects) can generate. Mediocre things about Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: +/- Extremely confusing and complicated level design in the numerous awe-inspiring and interesting locations. Objectives may often be far above or below you and there are situations where you seem to need to go back in order to progress forward. The game’s map doesn’t help much. +/-Mediocre use of vehicles. This was hard to believe in a Borderlands game. No vehicles feel like they are really well used (especially not the moon buggies). There’s no environment for them to really get up to high speed for a long period of time. All the external environments are messy and craggy and full of clutter. There’s just no place to relax and drive. +/-It was very hard to find good weapons throughout the game. This caused me to hold on to weapons I got for long periods of time and (as in the first Borderlands game) to use shotguns far more than any other weapon type (because of the higher numbers of critical hits they always get). +/-While using the slamming special move worked well, I did not find it very useful as it used up my character’s oxygen when in low atmosphere environments and so I got used to almost never using it. Plus, early on you get an item which allows the act of collecting oxygen tanks to heal you which is EXTREMELY useful and I never really stopped using that item instead of any others which enhance slamming damage. +/-Some replay value. Beating the game unlocks an even harder mode which, I guess, would be ideal for people rushing through the game while playing with others and who loved the experience and want more. Bad things about Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: -Bad music overall. It’s really sad (and bizarre) how bad and boring this game’s music is. Only the Claptastic Voyage DLC has anything approaching good music. -Same basic enemy AI, exhibiting same kinds of behaviors you can find in pretty much any other Borderlands game. And yet again, enemies are stuck in the areas in which they appear. They never leave those areas, meaning you can try to run past them if you want to. -When looking at weapon stats it is hard to know whether any random weapon is really good or not without actually shooting it first (just like in Borderlands 3). -Though chaotic, action can get extremely repetitious. Enemies in battle areas reappear when you are absent causing you to fight the same battles over again when you come back. -A recurring minor bug sometimes occurs which can be quite irritating. In menus sometimes items are highlighted/selected which you do not have your mouse hovering over and did not select. You must exit the menu and re-enter it. -So this is where the confusing and poorly designed menus used in Borderlands 3 came from? While simpler and more streamlined here, the menus are still clearly designed more for style than practicality. -No option to remove the huge and often intrusive crosshairs from the heads-up-display (HUD). This also interferes with taking pretty screenshots of the game. -Cannot turn off the indicator saying that you need to reload. It is extremely distracting. -The bosses in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (and its DLC) are clearly designed to be fought against by multiple players at a time. Trying to defeat them solo was extremely difficult.

By far my favorite out of all of the borderlands games. Easily the best and most captivating story line out of the rest. And the best characters and some of the most fun to play with vault hunters. Most complaints about the game include the space and oxygen elements of the game, but those elements are what really make this game special and unique in my opinion.