Borderlands 3 – Far from the Best Looter Shooter – Impressions

Seven years after the launch of one of the best looter-shooters the 360/PS3 era saw, Borderlands 2, it’s sequel is finally here. I’ve been playing Borderlands 3 since it launched and have been having a great time. Also it’s humor is absolutely dated.

Side note: PreSequel was a boring game and the gravity and air thing really sucked.

Fl4k is Cool.

Jumping into Borderlands 3 I already knew who my character or choice was going to be. I have always been drawn to the character with a pet or sidekick, and Zer0 being a bad ass assassin was an obvious choice. So Fl4k it is! He’s a bad ass bounty hunter robot with your choice of three pets! I know a lot of people prefer the skag dog thing, but my favorite is the little monkey with a pistol named Meat Thief.

Side note: “I know a lot of people prefer the skag dog thing, but my favorite is the little monkey with a pistol named Meat Thief.”

What a weird fucking sentence out of context.

Playing as Fl4k has been great. I throw out flaming Rakks and call them pocket rats. Fl4k genuinely has a really interesting sort of story. You get little tidbits from those tapes you find through out the world. It’s not enough for me to go and read up on it in my own, but he’s pretty cool.

Borderlands 3 Characters and Humor.

Unfortunately, Borderlands 3 isn’t funny. I remember finding some of Borderlands 2 funny. Handsome Jack was a solid villain and I think that DnD DLC was actually pretty funny at times. I don’t remember ever thinking Claptrap was funny. He’s still not funny in 3, but he definitely takes a backseat and that was probably for the best.

Borderlands 3 suffers from the “farts and butts are always funny” sort of mentality. Maybe it’s because I’m a lot older, and a lot of the people who enjoyed playing the first 2 games are much older as well, but that sort of humor just doesn’t really work anymore. It’s just sort of lame.

The characters of BL3 are still kind of cool. Lilith comes back and is all serious like normal. You can your random vendors back, and Ellie takes over for Scooter full time in this game. She’s fine too. I feel like they’re not around enough to really get on my nerves at all. Zer0 returns too and he’s still the coolest dude out here.

No one seems over bearing. Except for the two new main antagonists the Calypso Twins. They’re like shitty knock off Handsome Jack. Terrible jokes and just super obnoxious. I feel like they were just trying to recreate Jack and it just fell off entirely.

The new UI Sucks.

The UI got significantly worse this go around. Its split in half on your inventory, so comparing guns feels and looks weird. It looks terrible, the sorting only works half the time, and it’s super sluggish switching between tabs. Also, why did they made tabs inside a tab? Your skills menu has three tabs within it. It was way more simple when you could see everything all at once. It’s just a step backwards for sure.

Borderlands 3 Learned Nothing from Better Looter Shooters.

Borderlands 3 still has awesome guns, and most feel great. I definitely have my favorite guns right now, like a shotgun that has electricity splash damage. Shooting enemies is fun, but I think the looting is just too much. I think I’m over constantly comparing numerous guns and finding out they all suck compared to the equipped ones I already have. I like the diversity of guns for the most part, but it’s just too much for me.

One of my biggest disappointments with Borderlands 3 is that it does absolutely nothing new to the franchise. PreSequel added new mechanics like the gravity and air stuff. It was trash, but at least it seemed like they were trying something new. Where is the added customization? No armor loot is a huge bummer. The cosmetics are there but they really aren’t all that interesting for me. It just seems like the loot pool for guns is so enormous for nothing interesting, and all the cool high tier guns are behind one specific boss and even then it’s not a guarantee drop. It’s just a bad way to do loot.

Overall

Borderlands 3 is fun. I turn my brain off to the annoying side missions and pay attention to the cut scenes. The story so far is interesting for the most part. The new main enemies seem like Handsome Jack rip offs, which sucks. Shooting is fun, looting seems like a hassle now. Especially with a janky UI. Gearbox made a good Borderlands game, but the franchise is far from being the best looter shooter.

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