Hello, forum members new and old!
First time posting here in quite a while, but i felt I should share my experience with the Game of the Year Remaster Rerelease and ask you lovely people what you all thought of it.
My experience with the Borderlands franchise is a long and storied one; first played it on xBox 360 on original release back in 2009, took a Mordy to 50.
Switched over to PS3 shortly after that and played the ORIGINAL Game of the Year release, did a couple of the DLCs, I believe Zombies and Underdome, but got distracted by other games and real life.
Come 2012.
Borderlands 2 drops.
That game became my life (with a few other side games thrown in) for 2 years and a few thousand hours.
Platinum trophy, did everything you could possibly do, so much legendary / Pearl farming, solo play, group play, dozens (hundreds!) of gear mules, etc, etc.
Did the same (not as many hours, but Platinum and did everything you could do and more) for the Presequel.
Remember when PSN went down around Christmas 2014?
Couldn’t connect with my usual Presequel crew I was playing with around that time, so I threw in my Borderlands GOTY and fell in love with it all over again.
Started with a Siren (a class I had never played before, I didn’t “get” Phasewalk shakes head sadly at myself, so I had dismissed ol’ Lilith) and did (solo only) absolutely everything you could do (Platinum, all DLC trophies, but only used one character, Lilith, and mules), culminating in my first ever glitched Armoury runs (I had, of course, already been farming the heck out of the Robolution DLC Gift Shop for a while) and my first ever defeat of Crawmerax (Playthrough 2.5, of course, none of this switching back to PT 1 for a “reduced” Craw fight). That was SUCH an amazing feeling.
I then partnered up with a friend who had never played any of the DLCs and we did all those and Crawmoury farmed a bunch.
Then came the amazing Claptastic Voyage DLC, which I loved and Platinum’d / did all.
PS4 came out and I played, but not to Platinum, everything there was to play in the Handsome Collection with some friends.
Which brings us to the current time and the latest iteration of Borderlands 1 Game of the Year.
I had been STOKED for this rerelease ever since my transformative and highly enjoyable in depth PS3 Siren playthrough back in 2014/15.
But this time around?
I am dismayed to announce that it’s been more good than bad / frustrating, but it’s definitely been a mixture of those 3.
My younger brother and I were REALLY looking forward to co-oping this game from level 1 to level 69 and everything in between.
Yes, CO-OPing it.
I am sure you can already see where this is going.
He played the crap out of Borderlands 2 / The Pre-Sequel on PS4 but had VERY little experience with Borderlands 1 except for some random split screen with me over the years.
So when we were unable to connect to each other for a full week after release (when we had both cleared our schedule the best that we could to put some serious co-op time into it), it was SUPER disappointing.
We both played the crap out of it, on headset, together, but each playing in our own games, solo, so close yet so far.
He had the Platinum 8 days later.
Mine came a few days after that.
Then the wonkiness of some of the DLCs and their artificial difficulty (the question mark cave in the Robolution DLC, the tedious / neverending / dull as nails zombie fights in the Zombies DLC, other things) / wonky level scaling / NO LEVELING AT ALL (I’m looking at you, Underdome) / driving simulator areas became painfully apparent.
My younger brother sadly burned himself out on the game and deleted it with literally only Crawmerax left to kill (got his Roland all the way to 69), and I myself am currently sitting at 69 with Lilith, a Roland at 15, and a Mordy and Brick at 7 and 8, respectively.
I have gotten main game Platinum and all the DLC trophies except for the ridiculously grindy ones (you know the ones I mean), done a BUNCH of Gift Shop farming, a few glitched Armoury runs, and I still need the trophy for killing Crawmerax.
I’ve tried him a couple times; I just can’t whittle that bastard down despite having my Siren specced out the way I know I used to have her set up for Craw fighting, 4 high-statted (but alas not perfect parts and no Pearls, all Purples except for a dark orange Hellfire) SMGs (fire, shock, corrosive, high damage).
I don’t know whether they made Craw tougher for this iteration or whether I just haven’t practised and prepared as much as I did back in my PS3 days.
Could also be that my reflexes simply ain’t what they used to be, I’ve had multiple severe health issues since my PS3 days and have really been struggling in a few ways, health wise.
I’ll get him, though.
Oh, I’ll get him.
So, to bring this novella to a close, I reiterate:
My experience with Borderlands 1 has been mixed, but overall more good than bad.
Still love all the characters, all the writing, all the dialogue, the voice acting, the locations, the atmosphere.
The combat feels heavy and chunky and impactful, I love it.
The over the top elemental death animations are amazing.
I STILL prefer the Borderlands 1 loot and weapon system to any of the games that came after.
Frustrating things were the first week of no coop connectivity (although I do have to say that I am impressed with how relatively promptly they fixed that) and certain aspects of the DLCs.
But enough about me - how have you felt about it thus far?
I am greatly looking forward to all your replies and thank you all very much in advance for taking the time time to read / reply to my post!