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[*][u][b]Experience with the series:[/b][/u] Completed all previous Borderlands games.
[*][u][b]Progress:[/b][/u] completed main mission, all available side quests, and most collectibles. Did not engage with the post game past 20 minutes.
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I'll be frank: my foremost thought of the game is that these developers must despise their player base. There are so many bizarre design decisions that I can't otherwise explain. I don't think I've had this many issues with a title since launch Cyberpunk 2077. First, though: let's talk about what this game did right.
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[*]I paid for a Borderlands game and I got a Borderlands game so good job there.
[*]Overall the gameplay is good and what carries the title.
[*]Mobility is fun and gives you lots of options to use it like vehicles, gliding, jetpack dodging, etc.
[*]The game has a LOT of content: huge open world with 3 main bosses then a few giant areas to finish up the main campaign. Honestly this can also be viewed as a negative if it feels like it's dragging (which it tends to).
[*]The sound design is crisp, crunchy, and overall superb.
[*]Lots of build variety! Each of the 3 character trees has 3 different sub paths and you can respec rather easily.
[*]There aren't a lot of quests I want to highlight: but there is a quest with a version of Bop It in here and that amuses me.
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Now let's discuss some issues with the game:
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[*]The writing is just plain bad. This is genuinely the only title I can think of that would benefit from having AI writing... not because it'd improve the quality, but at least it'd be done quicker since I'm tuning it out regardless. It's the writing equivalent to a highschooler going ham on Mountain Dew and Dorritos on a Friday night.
[*]There are SO MANY states in which you can trigger a shader compilation: booting the game up, loading into a game session, teleporting around the map, and even minor adjustments to the graphics like FPS limit/vsync. Keep in mind some of these caching sessions can take 10-15min each.
[*]Some of the early propaganda speaker events are terrible. They have enemies that spawn seemingly endlessly and even a HINT of an enemy, two buildings away, VERY far outside the yellow circle of the event can cause your robot to just refuse to work on the speaker.
[*]Everything about carrying crimson caches to bases is abysmal: any action outside of shooting guns causes you to drop it, can't use a vehicle otherwise you drop it, bases are often up several grappling sections in which you drop it when you use one, and sometimes the cache will just straight up despawn if left on the ground for 3~ seconds.
[*]It's 2026 and the game about shooting buckets of guns doesn't have an option to skip dialogue. I'd often start a quest just to go stretch or take a bathroom break because I knew the NPCs would be yapping for a good few minutes.
[*]Turning a game's dialogue volume to 0% shouldn't improve your experience but well... here we are.
[*]The map is GIGANTIC and you get so few fast travel points, sequestered mostly to bases you capture. You have loads of respawn points but can't fast travel to them? Why?
[*]The auto waypoint system often bugs, trailing into the sky, through solid walls, or just shows you a completely different path separate than the on screen directions.
[*]Many objectives, especially finding primordial vault locations, give you a HUGE search area. I can't tell you... how absolutely boring it is to wander a giant circle playing hot-or-cold just looking for an objective to softly push so you can get back to the actual game.
[*]There's a mission where you can't touch lasers to get a bonus and doing delicate platforming in this first person game feels awful.
[*]The meteor event is garbage single player. It takes 20 seconds to kill some of the harder enemies that drop 8 crystals but the crystals despawn if left on the ground for longer than 1 second. Just frustrating.
[*]Money and eridium are nigh useless until post game. It's annoying to die and lose 10% of your cash, but it's even more obnoxious to hoard a resource not having a real use for it most of the game.
[*]Unique weapons have unique stats. Cool. Wish I knew what they did. If you inspect a gun it tells you what each stat does... except the unique ones. If a gun has a unique stat of "Mirror Sheen" the inspection description will literally just be, "Mirror Sheen".
[*]This game ran weirdly poorly for my decent rig. Had to knock everything down from Ultra to High to stop having my machine sound like it was trying to take off into space.
[*]At the 30% mark of the game I just started skipping all available cut scenes. Not a great sign... but even then I wouldn't put a "uh oh help this NPC within 30sec or he dies" scenario after a boss when I'm looking through loot and just zoning out because dialogue is happening. By the time I realized there was an actual timer to help someone they were basically already dead and I just threw my hands up like, "...ok".
[*]I'm still unsure why dying mills 10% of your cash. Doesn't feel like it compels me to not die. Also I don't like it when a main quests has a "haha just a little trolling" objective that will kill you and take your money for no reason.
[*]Not a fan of a game that will actively patch itself outside the Steam interface. I'm guessing it has to do with Epic's servers, but it feels off.
[*]The rift champion bubble just needs work. They shouldn't be able to be knocked 50 feet outside it leaving you to hope and chuck grenades at it in hopes that it dies before your 5sec timer expires making you lose the mark.
[*]This is a bad one: map settings don't save. This means changes to your legend like "show no completed objectives" or the level of zoom you have set WILL reset with each new game session.
[*]Do you have the DLC? That's a shame because those icons will appear in your face and on the map whether you like it or not.
[*]The bike will randomly despawn in areas that allow you to use it, even at full health.
[*]One of the final areas is a huge city that doesn't allow you to use your bike so lots of hoofin' it.
[*]I'll be real: Vex's familiar Trouble just doesn't look cool. It changes based on which tree and specialization you have, but none of the iterations look good. How do I hate the visuals of an ethereal tiger?
[*]NPCs are mostly locked to 2sec animations that loop forever which doesn't look the greatest.
[*]Sometimes chests visually glitch to appear as if they've already been opened but in reality they are still closed.
[*]Animal enemies don't often have a great counter other than, "kill quickly". The elephants and threshers can get particularly bad.
[*]I don't think I've ever hated a boss in a Borderlands game enough to memorize its name like I did with Shadowpelt. Want a huge, invisible wolf that only lets you damage its health for 5sec before fully regening its shield? It's easily the worst fight in the entire series.
[*]The Vex familiar has weird aggro parameters. It will often just stare at me, rolling around on the ground as I'm actively being shot in the face. It also tends to just teleport through the floor and leave me to my fate.
[*]There's a specific skill to Vex that gets a floating, green skull to loop around you if no enemies are around and I can't tell you how obnoxious it is to have that thing loop around you at high speeds constantly making those noises.
[*]I had a main story NPC tell me, "we have a demon to HUNT" for hours of the game and I'm glad I can finally stop hearing him randomly say it.
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Yes it is a new Borderlands game, but it comes with a hyper amount of annoying issues and weird lack of quality-of-life. We're almost a year out from its launch and I still don't think it's ready.
