Picked up a used copy for cheap a couple months ago and finally got down to playing it, about 40 hours in and can't stop! If you've been on the fence about this give it a shot, the first few hours on Pandora are really par for the course, but once you get your ship the game became my absolute favorite Shlooter of all time. There is a TON of variety in locations, with at least 5 planets with some truly MASSIVE areas. The gunplay feels great, and the added mobility options really make blasting the plethora of different enemy types a joy. Weapons have WAY more variables than was discussed on the podcasts, though it does take some time to get to the good shit. The ship is such a perfect hub to balance out the craziness, and the horde mode is also a ton of fun. I do admit the humor is mostly bad and constant, but if you can look past that this game is an easy 9/10 for me.

For context, Im playing a level 40 FL4K, but the Siren also seems pretty great. Mech girl is boring.

I think basically every outlet had the same stance of:

it is Borderlands. if you still like blands 2 and could tolerate the presequel but don't want to play blands 2 again then this is a good buy

it just mostly had the same problem Crackdown 3 had. This is very much an early 10s game. And the much better previous installment(s) got a graphical and QOL upgrade right before this launched.

@gundato: I have to disagree with the early 10's assessment. The shooting feels GREAT, with the addition of climbing and slides, the multiplayer works perfectly and allows for players of different levels to play together. The open areas are far larger, and the weapon variety beats any "modern" shlooter I can think of. Pre-Sequel was pretty bad, but other than the writing I can't see the Crackdown 3 comparison, the game just feels polished at every seam. Maybe there have been significant patches? that wouldn't surprise me, but whatever state it was in in september they have certainly fixed it.

That's good. I thought it was kind of boring. I played through one and two a couple of years ago back-to-back with all the DLC (originally, I thought they were also kind of boring around launch), and I discovered that I enjoyed them a lot. I bought three a couple of months late, but when I got to it, I ended up thinking it was underwhelming. The gunplay was probably the best out of any of them though and I liked some of the music, but I thought that what story was there and the characters fell flat. The humor wasn't that great either this time around. Something that surprised me when getting into one and two was that I liked the characters more than I was expecting, and in three to round out the trilogy, it was disappointing in that respect. There are a lot of memorable places to visit in the series as well (and maybe it's just due to a lack of DLC at that point), but in three it was, again, lacking. It's one of those games that in the last ten or so hours I was just trying to hurry through so I can finish it.

@ntm: Maybe I just tuned out of the Shlooter scene enough to be impressed, but whatever works I guess! I never could stand any of the character, i can see the terrible writing detracting from the experience for you definitely. Anyone else have a positive experience or am I a weirdo?

This idea that BL3 is a"tens game" is a crock. BL3 was modernized a lot from its predecessors; in every technical way it's leaps and bounds better than 2 was. All four characters are distinct, balanced, and very fun to play w/many build and playstyle options. This was not the case in BL2.

The story is the weak spot, and not to excuse it, but people generally don't play a Borderlands game for story anyway. The end game has quite a few different and fun things to do solo or co-op, with all the trials, arenas, and the latest Maliwan raid w/another raid due soon. There have been two seasonal events already. The first DLC was a good length and very solid while adding some really fun weapons and class mods, and another DLC is right around the corner.

The game has gone through quite a few fixes and patches, all for the betterment of the game in terms of polish and qol changes. Some of their weapon and build nerfs got some heat early on, but now they are instead periodically buffing(some hugely)quite a few of the lackluster weapons keeping the quest for better weapons and builds fresh. It's more Borderlands for sure, but it's more of a much better Borderlands experience overall.

I just beat the game by myself on the PS4 (finished with Moze at level 40).

The writing wasn't great, but there were some interesting additions to the lore and story. It felt like several of the planets dragged on too long, and I finished with a decent amount of side quests left undone. The shooting felt fine. I've been playing the older games with people and I can't say I've noticed a huge difference.

I'm picking this up on Steam this week to play with people as well.

I was thinking about getting this on Steam soon, but I've been playing a lot of The Division 2 and I'm sorta burnt out on these bullet sponge games. Also Doom Eternal is coming out on the 20th and well, yeah that will be getting all my attention.

@pweidman: pre-sequel already went a long way toward making each character distinct. Visuals and performance are nice, but blands 1 and 2 got a lot of those upgrades too.

That is why I put it in the context of crackdown 3. When you actually go to play it, there is a lot of "if this had come out ten years ago I would not have been too surprised". And when a lot of the QOL features that actually exist were backported and the rest are non-existent? It is hard to really call it "modern"

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. But that is kind of why it is a weird value proposition for a 2019 game.

Especially when all the games are still missing so many of the QOL features we kind of just take for granted at this point.

I keep circling this game as an "our-city-might-be-quarantined-soon" podcast companion. If the shooting and level design feel solid enough, I'm not sure I'd care either way about the writing or whatever.

Seems like people generally liked it enough. Might end up ponying up for it.

So the game is 50% off on Steam until the 20th of this month. Damn it, now I'm considering buying it even though I will have Doom Eternal to play a week later.