Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Setting: The developers did an excellent job transitioning the game's playground from a desert wasteland to a thralling moon atmosphere. Your characters require Oxygen Tanks to breathe, all except the robot of course, and require constant refilling of those tanks through environmentally controlled waypoints, mysterious underground air pockets, or small capsules that drop from enemies. The system will warn you when you are getting low on oxygen (and it can be turned off in options if it gets too annoying). The lower gravity of the moon also allows you to jump higher and land softer (not that fall damage was ever an issue). You are equipped with a jetpack that allows you to inject oxygen to perform a "double jump" in any direction. Crouching down while in the air will make your character create a "slam" upon enemies in the area. The damage and elemental causation depends on what you have equipped. This applies to other humans as well. Enemies will also slowly die without an oxygen mask, be able to leap across zones without issue, and be able to slam their body upon your precious face. One major difference is the fact that certain enemies seem to be capable of staying in the air indefinitely. The game implements these changes effortlessly. It made the game more relaxing, if you can imagine that.
And yet the new Sci-Fi setting adds so much. They added jump pads! They made containers pop out and items fly off into space. They introduced laser weapons! This includes your typical steady stream, shotgun spread, or heavy railgun shots. You can still have any of your core elements: Incendiary (aka fire), Corrosive (aka poison), Shock (aka lightning), or Explosive (aka boom-boom). The developers made sure to include the exception: Incendiary only works in oxygen-filled environments (since that's how fire works and all). There is also one new element to consider. While Borderlands 2 introduced slag (which adds damage to any other type), Borderlands: PreSequel introduces Cryo. I think that ability is self-explanatory.
Classes: A major hurdle for me was trying to decide on the one class to play through the whole game. I checked out the skill calculator, read forums, and watched videos. I considered the fact that Claptrap and Jack have the funniest dialogue, Claptrap and Aurelia have team-based trait trees, Claptrap does not need oxygen, Wilhelm playing like Axton, and Nisha being a blend of Zero and Salvador in Borderlands 2. Claptrap's ability seemed too random, Jack's ability too powerful, and Nisha's ability too wild. I came close to trying out Aurelia until I heard her dialogue was not only brief but egotistical as well. In the end, I decided to play Athena. She is the one telling the story. Yet, I wasn't expecting the developers to make her a lesbian. Her "turtle tactic" became real helpful during tough battles. Though in the end I can't help but shake the feeling like I chose the wrong class.
Modifications: I think they did a wonderful job with balancing out the currencies (at least until level 30). Vending machines might not have offered as many cosmetic skins as Borderlands 2 in my playthrough but they offered much better items (blue or higher). Somehow I even managed to find a legendary class mod for my class at level 20 for nearly the exact amount of money I had in my pocket: 18,000. They might have also reduced the sell value of weapons (or maybe it was just due to that To Arms! quest) to motivate people in using the grinder to combine three weapons into a brand new one. The game replaces Eredium in Borderlands 2 with Moonstones. In addition to raising your maximum ammo Moonstones can enhance Lunar effects and rarity chance on ground weapons, buy special chests guaranteed to drop purple items (which I wish I knew before using 40 each to open a few), and "Moxx-tails" that provide minor 30-minute buffs to the character. However, I did not like how they removed the ability to mark weapons with an 'X' next to it and made it so all non-favorite items were already considered as "trash" to the vending machine.
When it comes to vehicles, the Moon buggy plays nearly identical to the Outrunner. However, the Stingray is drastically different than the Bandit Technical. Not only does it offer the superior secondary abilities of firing flak or cryo rockets but it also can jump in the air and slam onto enemies. Despite this, I hated how its vehicle manuevers were locked behind other abilities. Jumping was set to the skill ability while Slamming was set to throwing a grenade. There was no way to differentiate the two abilities.
You still can't see multiple quests on the map. In fact the mission flow forces you to complete a story quest for the region first before getting any optional objectives for the area. You still can't filter through challenges that well. Putting one on watch doesn't add it to the screen neither does it leave the menu open when checking out multiple challenges in a given field. I think I still prefer Sanctuary over Concordia despite both having issues with finding certain assets. Hitting the escape key on the main menu should allow you to leave the game, not back to the title screen. You would think they would add more unique icons on the map for these type of things. Dialogue was a bit choppy when it was clear it catered to your particular class/character. Enemies stayed the same level as you in certain areas. I could not decide whether or not this was a bad thing. It also seemed like respawn rates were much longer than the other games in the series and might have depended whether you were on a particular quest or still within the area after logging out.
DLC: It is too bad this game didn't get as much support as the other games. Shock Drop Slaughter Pit is a glorified arena with 5 rounds I managed to complete I think between the levels of 14 and 17. The Holodome Onslaught is another arena that was poorly developed. Enemies slowly trickled in and sometimes refused to advance past certain pillars or barriers. As much as I wanted to hear Axton and Gaige ask about events in the game (since the DLC starts at level 25), I couldn't bare to continue through another round of meandering through enemy fighters and stopped at round 3 of 6.
And then there is the one campaign DLC Claptastic Voyage. Let me come out and say that I thought it was going to be like Borderland's New Robot Revolution. It ended up being an entirely different breed. There was so much in this DLC
that there is just no way of putting it into words (without spoiling
it). It was designed as if you visited Claptrap's "emotion" banks
touching on certain events as well as visiting "memory" banks that
highlight whole areas in previous games. The "central hub" is developed
like Tron with the Borderlands humor still intact. The story was way too cruel and sad to be enjoyable. I enjoyed it for what it was but they went too far in certain areas. Then there was that huge difficulty spike at level 30. I was level 33 with level 27 gear and a protective Phalanx build which was barely enough to get by. To add insult to injury, I couldn't finish it. The final boss was way too hard took way too long to finish. This was worst than BL1 Roid Rage Psycho or BL2 Campaign of Carnage. This was like an actual 4-player raid boss. So, yeah, I rage quit and watched the ending on Youtube. Good enough in my book.
Summary: Changing Borderland's fast-paced wasteland battles to outer space made the game different enough to be both relaxing and enjoyable. Adding more unique dialogue, despite certain members being underdeveloped, allowed more engagement and depth to the characters. Small adjustments improved the game's core gameplay while little to no changes were done to fix the minor problems that are still present from the previous two iterations. The game's major flaw relies with how the antagonist appears less menacing and even more impersonal with the protagonist than in Borderlands 2 even though the overall story is still interesting enough to finish. Main game took me 23 hours; DLC added another 7 hours.
10-6-2019