Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: Worth the price?

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Gearbox and 2k's third installment of the Borderlands series takes us to Pandora's moon, Elpis. However is the game really worth the price they give? WARNING: There may be spoilers which may spoil Borderlands 1&2 for you, if you haven't played those before & care about the lore.



Graphics wise this game is basically Borderlands 2 with slight improvements. The HUD hasn't changed besides from some needed new stuff such as the oxygen meter. Is this bad? Yes and no. Some people may think of it as a massive DLC, some think "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Personally it doesn't really matter to me, but it adds to the BL2 DLC feel thanks to another major factor. But hey, there are more games which do not improve their graphics or do it just a tad.

That other factor being the weapons. All the weapon designs apart from the laser equipment and some camo's are literally from BL2. SCAV weapons/parts are just Bandit weapons/parts from BL2 with a different camo. And this dissapoints me a lot. At least they should have made SCAV more unique instead of just using the Bandit models. There are a few new legendaries from what I have heard and seen, but even those are easy to get as I have had 4 legendaries in weapon vendors. The new weapons, the laser guns, they feel special and there are different forms of them aswell which is pretty cool. You can have a railgun which is really powerful but slow and inaccurate when firing in bursts (getting a Dahl one is just rubbish) and then there is a Splitter which acts like a shotgun.

Like in BL2, there are quite some bosses and even raid bosses to fight. However what I find most disturbing is that some of these cannot be fought again because you cannot enter the area again. Another thing that really dissapoints me cause this basically means farming is no longer a thing and you are just hoping the gun will show up in the vendor or you get lucky at the Grinder (more on that later). The raid bosses on the other hand have gotten a litte tweak for the Normal difficulty. They are at a level you are at that time, making them doable on your first run so that you can get their loot. However I fought them like 4-5 times and they seem just way too easy and not raid boss worthy. Some bosses in the game are fairly easy to beat and some are a pain in the arse because somehow you fight off minions instead of the actual boss while he sits miles away from you shooting stuff at you... That is NO FUN Gearbox... not at all.

Almost 70% of the bosses in this game cannot be rebattled btw... really saddening

Story-wise the game explains a lot about how stuff happened in BL2 and why you did things in BL1.
MAJOR SPOILER (but a really good example why BL1 is involved even though that game explained nothing)

I won't tell too much here because spoilers, but the story is fairly short and there are 60 sidemissions which do not take much time either.

Relics have been replaced in your inventory by Oz-kits, aka the stuff you need to breathe on the moon or else you die. They also allow you to boost your jump so you can jump a bit further than normal (people call it double jump but I don't seem to go much higher from it) and the so called "buttslam" which does a fair ammount of damage but is risky cause you have to be close to enemies and they can tear you up pretty bad.

Class-wise there are 4 new classes: Wilhelm the Enforcer, Nisha the Gunslinger/Lawbringer (idk for sure), Athena the Gladiator and Claptrap... yes Claptrap. You can play as the most annoying character from Borderlands 2, the one you wanted to kill after one hour into the game cause he did nothing remotely useful. One thing I'd like to note about Claptrap is that he is somehow bigger than the other Claptraps around Helios and Elpis, and not just a tad, no he is 1.5 times bigger than them. When I played as Claptrap and stood next to another, I facepalmed looking at the difference. Why Gearbox... If you do not like the FoV Claptrap should have then do not add him into the game, don't make him 1.5 times larger than all the other Claptraps around the friggin place. I have been mainly playing as Athena though, never touched Wilhelm nor Nisha because I yet have to finish the 2nd playthrough as Athena. Athena's skill, which is a shield that absorbs damage and when thrown at the enemy the shield deals damage+ absorbed damage which can end up really OP when absorbing a ton of damage and then unleashing on a Badass or even a boss if you so desire. Plus it makes her sorta immune to everything for a brief moment which is good for reloading all your weapons, getting ammo or recharging your shield.

Overall Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel gets a 6/10 from me, simply because the game plays fine and there is nothing to complain about the gameplay, but there are way too many things that drag this game down and outweigh the good things. Personally I can look past the BL2 guns and HUD but when I found out that almost every boss can't be farmed I wanted my money back. This game is Borderlands going on the road of Call of Duty, and I am not joking. Gearbox needs to do something against this because this ruins the experience for me.