After hours of bl3 I recently went back to bl2 and was blown away by how much better the voice acting and script writing is. So many hilarious, or at least amusing lines and situations. The actors in the voice booths of bl2 were having genuinely good times. I agree that in bl3 Vaughn is over the top but not funny. Side characters are all the same brand of over-the-top but not funny. Claptrap has lost all his humour. Tannis, Lilith, Eva and Lorelie are all strangely boring (Tannis was truly weird in bl2). Torgue is just brutal and violent rather than also being oddly sweet and crazy. In the end, to me, bl3 felt oddly joyless.
Yes! This game's writing has totally removed itself from the charm that earlier Borderlands games had. It really is a shame. The gameplay is great, but the story is supposed to be the glue that holds together the gameplay. So everything really feels all over the place at times. I still think it's a ton of fun to play despite that though.
@@LIKEMIKE593 Interesting. I wondered about that. They had a talent drain then. Claptrap actor, I believe, left before 3 also. And Handsome Jack actor isn't as involved of course. I'm convinced there was a lot of fun and talented improv in the voice booths for bl2. You can't convince me that "Hey, how... ah, these pretzels suck... so how's your day been, buddy?" was pre-scripted..
@@gljake both the calipso twins are cringe, but I think ava takes the cake 🎂 bratty AF and gets Maya killed. 🤣At least troy has the good boss battle theme✅🎶
In BL2, there was a lot of moments where I'd sit in front of the door I'm supposed to go through so I can let everyone finish talking and hear the dialogue because I killed everyone too fast. In BL3, there's a lot of waiting around for the characters to finish talking so they can open the door, tell me where to go, or spawn the enemies
Recently started replaying and i couldnt be more annoyed. Why do i need to keep talking to you? Just do the thing! Open the door, give me the vehicle, press the button, i dont need to talk to you! Youre capable!
Incidentally, this is true for the pre-sequel aswel, lots of moments in the story when the road ahead is outright closed to you until the NPC stops talking.
I think I would have been ok with the twins as villains if they would have went in another direction. Skipping over the fact that Tyreen took Lilith's powers without killing her, and Troy turned Maya into ash when he took hers. If they would have had troy, in a moment of weakness and desperation, consume Tyreen. This, in turn, would have killed Tyreee but it would have also put Troy into a position of power that was far far beyond anything that he ever had felt before. Troy should have been the final boss, not Tyreen.
You know its really interesting, when first playing through this game it actually felt like for a second, they were going to take this route. But then of course, they didn't. Totally agree with you here.
@@gljake During the mission that ends with the Aurelia fight, there is dialogue between Tyreen and Troy that really makes it seem like he's not happy with her being the better of the two of them and I was so sure there would be a betrayal of some sort
All of Eden-6 they were building up to troy potentially becoming the villain, hell i think troy has the BEST boss theme, (not to mention the funniest glitch when bl3 first came out), Troy felt like such wasted potential, there could have been so much more. In Eden 6 there was even the side mission where they ask YOU to blow up the others base, just cause they were getting pissy with eachother, so much so they didn't even seem to care that their base was blown up in the end, just that the other one was destroyed...
I played hundreds of hours of Borderlands 2 as a kid. Once Borderlands 3 came out I just couldn't get into it. I played through it fully twice and never touched it again. I can't put my finger on it but something is missing from BL3.
I think there are some intangibles in this game that turned off a lot of hardcore BL fans, but I really couldn't put my finger on it either while I played through it. I can understand where you're coming from, though.
And that’s why I’m playing through Borderlands 2 over again because I love it’s gameplay, skills, and story. The dialogue can be cringe at times but majority they ducking nailed it in that one.
Same here. I played through BL 1&2 hundreds of times but I only played through BL 3s campaign once with one character and never played it again. It just didn’t draw me in
The problem I have is replayability, which the borderlands series always had, having to go back to sanctuary a gazillion times to listen to the same bad story that you can’t skip, really hurts the game.
This is so true. Borderlands really is all about replayability, and although the gameplay is awesome sitting through more COV broadcasts and bad Vaughan jokes is a hard pass from me, at least right now.
@@gljake being on pc i found the easy way out was to download a save editor first reset your skills in game, better safe than sorry now create 3 copies of your save (with a cleared story of course) use the editor to change the class in said 3 copies now you can go to town with all 4 classes by playing the game once (sorry console players)
I think that is the main reason the people didn’t stick with this one as long. It’s a farmers dream but the old loop of OP levels and UTVHM is gone. I don’t miss them, but some people really do.
The story, joy, and humor of BL3 really killed the game for me, I still have yet to beat the game fully. I just can't bring myself to do it, it feels like I'm being dragged through glass from gun fight to gun fight.
My biggest issue is how.... God awful the dialogue is throughout the WHOLE game. I think this is one of those cases where you have a writing team that absolutely does NOT deserve it's job and the opportunity it was given. The other thing is how it's at odds with a lot of things in the franchise. The Pre Sequel/Tales From The Borderlands are retconned. Aurelia? The character that "Isn't outright evil" and was too ashamed to even talk to her brother in TPS, and goes through a character arc where she starts to realise how bad of a person she is and feel bad about it? (Like after the whole Fecility thing and the way she starts to see herself in Jack and how she starts to hate him)? Well, this game just retcons that for another generic "Villain of the planet" take. The whole "War is coming, we need all the vault hunters we can get"? Gone. Not just that, but there's so many little details throughout the whole plot. This game feels like some horrible self insert fanfic they got from DeviantArt or Reddit. My other issue is how Mayhem 2.0 ruined a lot of the balancing. A LOT of gear and even classmods and builds were left behind. And God, the whole end-game thing was a mess throughout most of the game's life cycle. The Pre-Sequel had handled balancing almost perfectly, how can they get it so wrong? And it's a big shame, honestly. This game does a lot right technically, but this new wave of Borderlands content (Specially New Tales) has kind of ruined the world for me.
They really have done some damage to the IP with some of these ridiculous decisions, that's for sure. They clearly still know exactly how to make the game itself fun, but between this and the atrocity of New Tales they have some serious work to do for the next full release to get a lot of folks back on board with the franchise. Thanks for the comment!
@@gljake honestly, I haven't had high hopes for gearbox as a whole since lawbreakers. Seems like they struck gold with the half life expansions and bl2 and just started deliberately forgetting everything they did right since the pre sequel launched.
@@user-wj6jh1cd5n it does seem that way.. hard to believe it's been over 10 years since they put out BL2. I hope they figure out a way to return to that form.
the story content that was cut from the game makes me feel so bad for what we ended up getting. Maya died for no reason and her death fell so flat. They cut this beautiful conversation between Lilith and ava at Mayas funeral and it made me like ava. I dont know if gearbox thought that touchy Feely stuff didn't belong in borderlands but I think a bit of seriousness would of made the game so much better. We ended up getting butts fart jokes and a poop gun skin.
Touchy feely?! Like they did with Tiny Tina Dlc, where they rekt my heart bringing back Roland just so i could grieve again with Tina.. Nah, nah, they know how to do that, they just didnt want to for Bl3. Bl3 is seaons 5(ish), 6, 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones, great gameplay and visuals for the first one, and great cinematography and visuals for the later. But story and characters are getting more stupid every seconds.
I just picked this game back up for the first time since launch. It's super fun to play but the main story is... something. I love Vaughn, he's a bromigo for sure. Troy and Tyreen are aweful but the kind of aweful they're supposed to be, if they weren't so annoying would we want to kill them as much as we do? My biggest gripe is Ava and how they did Maya dirty like that. Ava, Maya's apprentice, is directly responsible for her teachers death. Instead of doing some introspection and growing as a character she lashes out at Lilith like it's her fault and proceeds to whine for the rest of the game. For some reason she is in the Inner Circle of Sanctuary giving input on decisions that influence the lives of entire planets, why?! She's a literal child with no credentials at all. She's not a Siren until the very end, she's not a Vault Hunter, she has zero connections to Sanctuary or anyone there outside of Maya who is now dead. Yet somehow apparently Lilith wants her to become the LEADER of Sanctuary? Excuse me while I blow my brains out. Absolutely none of it makes any sense to me. Even putting aside my hatred for that character, her involvement in the events of the story seem so forced and out of place to me that it's appalling. And don't even get me started on the ending! Lilith just flies off into the moon in a giant burst of flame, cuts to credits, and starts singing "This girl is on FIRE!". The ending genuinely felt like an insult to my intelligence. Sorry for the rant. The game in genuinely fun which makes the bad story bits all the more frustrating as they keep the game from being what it could be. Thanks for the video, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I totally agree with your take on Ava. I was trying to keep this video as spoiler-free as I could have or I would have dived a little deeper into Ava's character for sure. It is incredibly frustrating how she is basically responsible for the death of Maya and then like you said, just bitches and whines for the rest of the game and then inexplicably becomes a Siren, after doing absolutely nothing to earn it. I seriously hoped that Maya would have been brought back towards the end.. because the way the game ends now, it definitely feels like Ava is going to be a major part of the next game. And yeah.. the ending of this game was brutal. Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate it.
Borderlands 3, a game with possibly the best original soundtracks and great non-soundtrack songs (Making the long drive to Apollyon Station more bearable) includes "Girl on Fire" at one of its most important points of the story. A song that was released ***2 WEEKS BEFORE BORDERLANDS 2*** was released on Steam! What was the thinking there ? I can't skip that cutscene fast enough (Thanks for letting us skip cutscenes, Gearbox)
@@ChilledPsycho Also if Lilith was insistent on choosing an npc siren to be the next leader, the smartest woman on the planet who was retconned to be a siren was standing right next to the literal immature child that blamed Lilith to begin with.
You say the enemies are good in bl3. I agree with you but in bl2 on your second play through going into true value hunter the enemies are upgraded/evolved and look different. It makes things feel refreshing and gives alot more replay value because it gives a feel of fighting new enemies.
Not really. To me giving a psycho armor and a Goliath a rocket launcher doesn’t make them new it’s just a psycho with armor and a Goliath with a rocket launcher. It’s nothing like the remnant franchise where you will never play the same route twice. There every playthrough you get different quests, different bosses, different rewards every playthrough if you want to see everything you have to play the story at least twice and there’s even more to see if you decide to increase the difficulty. In bl2 all there is to see is a psycho with armor and a Goliath with a rocket launcher and that’s it
Even if a game has little story, it doesn't excuse very very very poor writing. Especially if that writing effects the player psychologically while playing. If it's so bad that it makes people want to switch languages (or in me and a friend's case, just turning the voice volume all the way down), then that's extremely awful. What makes it even worse is the fact that you can't skip dialogue or story elements. You have to hear these same things over and over again every time you play. And in a game that encourages that, that's another major issue.
The writting was meh, for me the vault hunters are so fun to hear, most of the time, I like mozes gameplay, but hate her voicelines, it's like hearing a squeaker back from the cod days on Xbox, but had a blast playing Zane and fl4k so much that I forget about the cringe story
Borderlands 1 will always hold a special place in my heart. My friend and I played that game for hoouuurs co op. Same with my brother. I still go back to it every now and then.
Except 1 and 2s gunplay was garbage, these are looter shooters, gameplay and loot system is obviously the 2 most important elements of a looter shooter and bl3 is best game in the series
such an old rusty style. everything looks like its held together by blood and sheet metal in that game. and the acoustics youll hear when your idle. great feeling the game gives.
I think the main issue of the writing/humour of bl3 is that gearbox forgot what made the writing of the previous games work. I’m not sure what the word for it would be but the “humour” was always used to contrast the horrible situations that were in the games and gave room to breath when necessary. For example the Goliath quest from sawtooth cauldron, you help a bandit try and get off planet only for them to be crushed by their transport. Another is visiting jacks grandma’s house where you find out he was abused, with jack laughing at the bait and switch he pulled. Or jack giving you a quest to literally kill yourself (in game). However when major plot points were happening the thin coat of humour got pulled away, when Roland was killed there wasn’t any humour in even any of the related side quests. It knew when to be respectful. What made the humour special was how morbid it was to have the cringy lines in horrible situations. Also I felt the BL3’s main campaign/story dragged on way too long, I feel they could have ended the game with the Troy fight then made necrodefayo, or however it’s spelt, a side/post game quest.
Agreed! They hit the right balance between dark humor and absurd humor in BL2, and they just went all the way to absurdity with BL3. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
@@mrsexy5680 if youre playing borderlands strictly for the story you shouldnt be playing borderlands, you should be playing the last of us for the 11th time
@@Thabba76 gameplay was bad too lmao, the entire game felt like a total cakewalk compared to the other 2, characters were cringy and uninteresting, and the only thing they nailed were the jokes… by making every single one of them so fucking cringe, the game sounded better on mute.
Another problem imo is the overabundance of legendary items. They are dropping like crazy in this game, to the point the rarity system loses it's value. Why would you even look at green, blue or most purple items, when legendaries are so common and powerfull?
story 100% matters. also the graphics are too much in 3 compared to 2. i like the desert vibes of 1 and the snow vibes of 2. 3 doesnt have a consistent vibe other than annoying. also unlimited legendaries starting at level 1 is so boring.
The narrative of the 2nd game is something to appreciate so much more in retrospect after this one. Fun as it is, they really screwed the pooch on leaning way to hard into an irreverent sense of humor that just ended up coming off as though damn near everything was treated as a joke. In BL2 I remember being surprised when, after Jack turned in to laugh about some guy whose eyes he removed with a spoon, I spoke to on of the people in Sanctuary who mentioned that was actually his father who Jack killed. It was just crazy how the small-talk dialogue had that sort of connection to what main characters would say, and there were quite a few examples of this sort of thing in BL2. Jack was such an amazing asshole but he also had depth, as did damn near every other character, and those little moments of discoverable dialogue with various NPC's lent depth to the world and narrative. I can't really think of another game that pulls it off in that type of way, so to be fair BL3 had some big shoes to fill on that front.
I think it's very important for BL to have at least a passable story as it is a game that is built around heavily replayability. It's a huge shame that they were unable to make that happen here, because they got it so right with BL2 like you said. BL2 may not be Read Dead Redemption or The Last of Us in terms of narrative, but it does what it needs to do exactly how it should. The story shouldn't be too overbearing, but it needs to be good where it counts.
@@gljake I completely agree. With BL2 it feels like the devs really sank their teeth into making it as if it was a creatively fulfilling experience overall for them. BL3 give the impression that the narrative team had little interest in the project other than churning out enough to make their deadlines. Not to hate on BL3 though, things could have turned out much worse all things considered. Your vid actually gives me a bit more appreciation for the 3rd game, much appreciated!
I'm still hearing NPC lines in Sanctuary I've never heard before. How many did they record, I wonder. I haven't heard the one you mention though. That's very cool.
@@stephenhardy4158 I've only heard repeated lines like maybe twice! I bet I just lucked out with hearing that line, and there's no telling how many I'll miss after playing. It really is one hell of a game, I've been utterly hooked since I started playing.
I really liked Bounty of Blood, it’s setting and overall story was pretty cool ik this dlc is a 50/50 in the community but i think the dlc was fine But what we can all agree on is the main story, dear lord what happened with that story
The endgame scaling was done better in 3 than any other game (solo player). Highest diversity of viable endgame builds. Best engine and gameplay. For me, that makes it the best in the series.
I think this is a great assessment. The endgame is what any serious Borderlands player is there for, any the gameplay is so good that casual players will have a ton of fun along the ride too.
@@Ilestun Totally. I found this game to be so much more satisfying to play as I reached the higher levels than I did in Borderlands 2, even though I think I still like BL2 better overall.
@@gljake At the highest difficulty, there was very little builds available in BL2. To me that was its biggest flaw. BL3 was the exact opposite and thats why its by far my favorite. But dont get it wrong.......I spent countless hours on BL2 and this is still one of my best game ever.
@@Ilestun Yeah this is totally true, BL3's build variety is seriously impressive. I have a feeling that BL3 will age very well, and maybe one day I'll look back on it as my favourite.
If I had to say SOMETHING nice about this and New Tales from the Borderlands, it's that between Jakob and Hammerlock and the Tediore Soldiers (specifically the mexican standoff) is that deep down, there is still some remnants of original series, even if it's only through like, one person that wrote those.
I know Ava and maya get mentioned a lot but I feel Typhon was also done the dirty hyped up so much and then....ends with a whimper, gameplay wise I wish they had a auto trash pickup option. I do think it's about time VH were given unique dialogues from other characters and the fact in cutscenes the VH was not part of it
Totally agree. Typheon was actually a pretty interesting dude but we didn't see enough of him, and then for him to be related to the calypsos like that was brutal. And yeah, I really wish I would have touched on the disappearing vault hunters in the cutscenes. It seems like for as badass as we're supposed to be, it makes little to no sense that we can't step in and do something about whatever is going on.
@@giansideros I have been watching UA-camrs trying to get god roll items and the amount of attempts is mind boggling, for a god roll revolter I think he was over 8000 attempts or something
18:03 Thank god you addressed this. The entire time you where saying the good things, I was just here thinking about how it's a shame that the story is so bad that it literally balances out all the pros. I had a hard time getting through the first playthrough, and barely got through the second. I honestly had a harder time getting through BL3 than I did with the pre-sequel, due to how hard it was to get into. To put it into perspective, I probably ran through BL2 at least 2 dozen times.
It's fun, but Ava's whole part in the main story really messed it up I think Troy and Tyreen were decent enough villains though. Definitely not good enough to top Handsome Jack, but I'll give them some rest, considering Handsome Jack is one of the BEST villains in gaming I think the DLCs improved in that area, though. Guns, Love, and Tentacles is fun. Great seeing Gaige back, and I loved the wedding and cosmic horror stuff I haven't started Handsome Jackpot, so I don't really know Bounty of Blood was AMAZING. Such an interesting little story and the fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetic is cool as hell And Fustercluck gives depth to Krieg, one of my favorite characters in the entire series. Also pretty glad Maya can retcon herself back into the story. What a Chad like move
While we're definitely in disagreement on Bounty of Blood's overall quality, I do agree that the aesthetic was impressive and that the story was a great change of pace from the obnoxious garbage pushed on us in the base game. I hope that if nothing else, BoB taught Gearbox that it is completely fine for Borderlands to take on a more serious, mature tone. I just think the pace of the narrative needs to keep up with the gameplay! I totally agree with you on Guns, Love and Tentacles and Fustercluck. While I wish Fustercluck had more content to speak of, what it does have was actually pretty incredible to play through. You should definitely play Handsome Jackpot! It was by far my favourite.
@@gljake I got the Season Pass Bundle on Xbox a few weeks ago, and I'm playing through them all on Mayhem 11, so I just have to do Fustercluck and Handsome Jackpot It's really hard, honestly, it took me a solid 20 minutes to beat the Wendigo Definitely can't wait to play the other DLCs though
I hit level 72 before finishing Psycho Krieg Also, TVHM is for Guardian Ranking. Buy the DLC on sale, my cousin bought the Season Pass for me. I wouldn't get Arms Race unless it's on sale. The script seems to be written by university kids. Vaughn was quirky cool in Tales, but he's just a cringey douche in BL3.
I'm not surprised to hear that! And yes, Guardian Rank is something I wish I would have touched on in this video. Season pass on sale is probably worth it! I didn't much care for arms race either, though.
For me as a long time borderlands fan bl3 while i really liked it, it was the main story and legendarys that made it somewhat of a disappointment for me doesn't need much explanation if you've played the story lmao. They kinda ruined the hype of getting a legendary, bl2 you could play for 20 plus hours and maybe get 3 legendary drops enless farming specific bosses. This made getting one randomly a big deal and a real hype moment now bl3, you can legit get 100 legendarys in a half hour of playing with lootsplosion modifiers just walking around a mob spawn area. And the sheer amount of boring or near useless legendarys are kinda off putting i don't pick up like 19 out of 20 legendary weapons i find. And the lack of another rarity over just legendary. Bl2 had white green blue purple then reddish purple (or eridium rarity) legendary then pearlessence the more rare rarity just made it really addicting to hunt for them. Most the dlc are really good and even the worst dlc in my opinion has better story then the main story of bl3. And Vaughn was a completely ruined character he was an extremely likeable character in tales from the borderlands but they just threw his intire personality out the window for that abomination.
I really debated whether I was going to mention what you're saying about the legendary drop rate! On one hand, it was pretty satisfying to get all these cools guns constantly, but on the other hand, it really removed that feeling of excitement when you see the orange glow pop out of an enemy or chest. I think this game would have done itself a favor by adding some higher loot drop rarities, especially through the end-game.
Glad you mentioned the skill tree's being locked behind a dlc/pay wall, I came back to borderlands after sometime to check out all the dlc's cause I had preordered the ultimate addition hoping to enjoy eveything AND SURPRISE SURPRISE IT DON'T COME WITH THE LAST DLC THE DIRECTORS CUT WITH THE EXTRA SKILL TREE'S.
Yeah it was a huge misstep for them to not include new characters instead... And multiple season passes is definitely something I should have brought up in the video hahaha I'm so tired of that trend
I seriously appreciate you saying that. One of my biggest motivations for doing this is to help normalize long-form game reviewing that is honest and to the point. I find most mainstream reviewers tend to write up a quick 5-10 minute piece about a game that just uses cookie-cutter language and in many cases, is afraid to upset the viewer with a contradicting opinion. I aim to set myself apart from that! I'm glad you enjoyed and again, I really appreciate your kind words. More videos coming soon!
great description of Lucien and I totally agree. I first thought of words like 'passionate' and 'real', but 'from the heart' seems to be the perfect description! love seeing what this guy has to offer next
@Levi vBI appreciate that so much dude. This is something I've put off trying to do for years, so I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed this video. Next video should be up Thursday! It's a long one .. lol.
@@gljake you just earned a sub from this comment. Love the review style and the willingness to be honest. I might even get back into borderlands 3 after watching this
Still playing Borderlands 2 again and again... Played Borderlands 3 twice and walked away. Story was aweful, had no charm... Legendary weapons never felt legendary....or worth keeping.... 2 levels later your looking at greens with better stats.... Maps were ok but not epic. Killing Maya? What were they thinking. Borderlands 4 better make up gor it
Someone clearly has no appreciation for classic westerns. Call me old and stogy, but Bounty of Blood was probably my second favorite of the DLCs. It's certainly more fully realized than the horribly underbaked Fustercluck.
I respectfully disagree with you on the placement of bounty of blood, as I quite enjoyed the change of pace and the ideas behind it. Call me biased as I am a fan of westerns, but I felt the story was pretty fun and a nice take on some of the “cliches” we have come to know of westerns over the years. The environment is pretty cool, with a blend of traditional Japanese and classic western. The narration wasn’t all that grating to me, and I quite liked the presentation of it being in a “story” format, as if your legacy will be remembered to be told for years. The weapons it added were pretty good too, with the standouts being the complex root, light show and unkempt harold to name a few. Overall I just liked the dlc and found myself smiling as the credits rolled. Otherwise I agree on everything else (Seriously the main story had so much potential…) Good day 👍
@@minzekatze what? The only great weapons that aren’t golds would be like the grog nozzle, pimpernel and the interfacer and the sandstorm on some builds right? Other than that the DPUH, the badaboom, the fastball and lightning grenades, Norfleet, Lyuda etc are all gold
Borderlands wasn’t really bout the story but Handsome Jack one of the greatest villains of all time. You should play the first tales though they did Vaughn dirty
IMHO all out of 10: BL2: story 11, game play 10, weapons 9, farming 10, replayability 10, voice acting 10- overall 10 BL3: story 0, gameplay 11, weapons 9, farming 6, replayability 5, voice acting 5-overall 8 (due to gameplay pulling it way up)
Also the amount of Raid Bosses. There were only three, unless you count Vermivoris in the DLC that has Ava’s podcast thing. Borderlands 2 had 10 Raid Bosses I think.
Terramorphus, Hyperius, Vermivorous, Voracidous, Dexiduos, Pyro Pete, Master Gee, Son of Crawmerax, The Invincible Dragons (counting them as 1), and Haderax. Yep, 10 Badass Raid Bosses!
The amount of content in 2 is ways above 3. Build diversity etc also no comparison. I still make new builds in 2 till today :O Well my favorite char is Maya, now look where she has gone... :S
I can admit my love for the borderlands series & the scenery is the only thing that kept me attached to this game. Part of what i loved about boderlands was the story it told along with the jokes and B3 seems like they focused more on trying to be funny than the story. Like cmon i just wanna know what happened after Borderlands 2 but ig we'll never know.
I feel like Tyreen and Troy could've been interesting and intimidating villians if they were A) treated as proper threats and didn't let us have the biggest plot armour ever B) nerfed them some. They had too much and finally C) made them bashful and playful, but lean out of the hip streamer dialogue and into the cult leader ideology. Let them be serious and malicious at times, and like Jack leave us to live just to fuck with us instead of not even acknowledging our existence, until we push him to his absolute limit and he wants us eradicated. Really divulge that backstory more, without spoiling it, to have hindsight. Also, Maya (and Ava because she ended up being a lil bastard) needed that scrapped funeral scene. If you're gonna kill a major charcater it needs to be treated seriously and somberly, like the sidequest that had you going to people around Sanctuary to tell them what happened to Roland, and even hearing dialougie of citizens saying "Roland's dead? No that can't be true" and stuff like that. Borderlands may be known for silly and jokey stories with absurd elements, but they had serious and weighty moments that weren't brushed off as well. They had WEIGHT. Borderlands 3 needed more weight to the story, because it just ends up feeling light and hollow despite being longer then all three past games. Edit: I actually loved Bounty of Blood. The pace mix-up was jarring but welcome. The more serious and less borderlands-esque story was quite enjoyable for me. I feel like it was a massive step up narratively from all other BL3 DLCs. Of course, narrative isn't everything, however the weapons and gear introduced can be super fun to use as well. Edit 2: not saying the game is bad. I just liked the stories of BL2 and TPS and felt like we were let down. It's great gameplay and I enjoyed it, but the story sucked all my enjoyment everytime somethime dumb happened
I seriously agree with your point on Tyreen and Troy. Cult leader villains have tons of potential to be seriously intriguing. As an example I really enjoyed the villain from Far Cry 5. And it's especially disappointing because they very clearly know how to make a villain fit in with the boisterous writing style of Borderlands as we saw with Handsome Jack. I don't think it's possible to overstate how important getting this right is, and Borderlands 3 just gets it all wrong. And as you said, it totally ruins the immersion. I didn't know there was a planned funeral scene for Maya! That would have been huge... especially if they handled Ava well. That's a shame. And you're totally right, not everything needs to be an outrageous joke in Borderlands. I wish they had understood this more clearly. And while I obviously didn't enjoy Bounty of Blood, I think your thoughts on it really speak to them starting to figure out that it's okay for Borderlands to take on a more serious tone. I hope this trend continues in the right direction for the next game.
IF BL4 takes a little more serious approach I wouldnt be mad. They really leaned into the "comedic" dialogue in BL3 and a lot of it missed. BL2 was a classic, but the gameplay, and guns are better in 3. Yet, it misses on the "IT" factor or the "feel" of the game that 2 had, but I think that is largely nostalgia.If both games came out today, no one would argue that BL3 is better except for those looking for a great story in a looter shooter...
One massive change they did which ruined borderlands 3 was adding multiple health bars. It complete destroys the feal of how strong a gun is. Hear me out. When an enemy has one health bar it allows you to understand the numbers on the card of the weapons much better. When you see a number on a gun you know exactly how much damage it will do in relation to the single health bar. With multiple of multiple diff types it just turns small enemies into a walking billboard of health bars. It crowds the screen on top of ruining the perception of what is strong.
16:49 Unpopular opinion I guess but I actually liked this dlc .3. It was different. Kinda made me feel like I was in a western movie maybe. Well a sci fi western XD still. Liked it. Didn’t like guns love and tentacles tho. Like it was okay but…well it was okay. Also real quick I should mention that you shouldn’t listen to him on the “don’t play the bounty of blood dlc” some of the best weapons in the game are in that dlc. Like the unkempt Harold for example. So I’d still play it if you want good gear. Cause a good amount of the meta weapons are locked behind that dlc
I don't think its an unpopular opinion! but from my perspective, the type of people worried about getting meta weapons aren't going to listen to what I have to say anyway! My thoughts on that DLC are directed more towards a casual player.
I picked this up for $8 a few weeks ago and have really been enjoying it, but man, the dialogue is so awful I'm actually dreading a possible second playthrough having to sit through everything again. Well worth it though, I'm just about finished with the main questline and it's a ton of fun for the reasons you outlined above. I do think the dialogue is objectively more cringe than the predecessors, but some minor QoL issues really exacerbate it and make it way worse than it needed to be. I remember in BL1/2 my strategy every playthrough was just to pick up every quest in town, take a quick glance at the map to figure out what to do in what order, and then start moving towards my first marker. During my time driving or running, THAT's where the cringe dialogue was delivered over the radio and I could make progress or do other stuff while the writers went nuts with the cringe. I didn't mind bad dialogue in the previous games because long dialogue didn't prevent you from making progress. That is NOT the case in BL3. You are forced to stand there, listen to all the horrible nonsensical dialogue in it's entirety, and then to add insult to injury half the time the NPCs will "hand" you a quest item after they finish their drunken babbling, so if you tried to get ahead of things and get on the road early like you could in previous games, you had to turn around and go all the way back to the NPC to receive the explosives or whatever. By level 5 I just started alt+tabbing out of the game to do something else while the characters were talking. I feel like I'm strapped to a chair with my eyes taped open being forced to listen to the dialogue as a weird form of torture. I feel like the game is intentionally holding me hostage. To make matters worse, the fast travel UI got a large downgrade from the previous iterations, only showing your active quest markers, forcing you to go to the quest screen, select a new quest, then go back to the map and zoom out to see where your new markers are, and then navigate the clunky fast travel UI. It makes overworld efficiency unnecessarily difficult and clunky. Why, gearbox? WhY? How are you so good at making the extremely difficult stuff, but then drop the ball on the most simple design elements you had nailed by BL1? Why go out of your way to go backwards with your design? You were so close to getting it perfect! These issues could be almost completely overlooked with some simple changes. Allow the player to spam space to skip dialogue. Allow the player to retrieve quest items and get on the road immediately while the NPC explains the quest over the radio. Put in a menu option to disable all dialogue and cutscenes. Anything! For the love of god! Having fun shouldn't be this hard! I'll also say that there is *some* decent comedy in the tidal wave of cringe. The "Penn and Teller" segment made me genuinely laugh at first (before they ran that joke into the ground). There have been some other genuinely funny moments, too, so it's not all bad. Just the lion's share of it is bad.
8 bucks is a steal for this game for sure! But it's definitely not perfect.. "some minor QoL issues really exacerbate it and make it way worse than it needed to be." I think this is actually an excellent point that I should have mentioned. In BL2 I did exactly what you're describing, just bomb around town picking up quests quickly. I didn't have much interest in what the random NPC had to say. The way BL3 handled this actually made me stay away from doing a lot of side quests I otherwise probably would have done. As you put it, I think that besides the dialogue the only other glaringly obvious problem with this game is the UI. The fast travel UI is terrible, we are definitely in agreement on that. And frankly, all of the UI needs an upgrade. While I think it looks pretty nice, the usability of pretty much every menu in the game leaves a ton to be desired. I think gearbox needs to stop iterating on the UI design philosophy they laid out in BL1 almost 15 years ago and take a step into the future. The whole thing should be overhauled for the next BL game. I also enjoyed some of the comedy the game has to offer, but.. yeah. The majority of it is absolutely unbearable. Thank you so much for this great comment!
@@gljake yup UI could use some work all-around. I find myself doing a lot of housekeeping in my inventory and the "2-column, large thumbnail" visuals makes it difficult to keep track of stuff. Having more sorting options (damage, fire rate, etc) would help, or a "loot as junk" option when you pick stuff up. Just a lot of little issues add up to make the UI feel outdated. It's death by a thousand cuts. A lot of the UI could be easily made more efficient and information-dense without compromising the aesthetic. Kinda frustrating to think about a studio like GB falling short with respect to design basics. It's not like any of these criticisms are inherent to the core design of the game, either. Although I understand nothing is "easy" with game development, these criticisms could have been addressed very late in development (or fixed in a patch now, even) with very minimal, if not nonexistent, overhaul of existing systems. What a waste.
I played borderlands 3 as my first borderlands game and went back to play the 2nd one, and I really liked it. Some issues I have from 2 to 3 is that Pandora isnt snowy anymore and the quest markers are the same shape no matter how far from the objective you are.
I really like the way Pandora is represented in Borderlands 2, you get to explore this planet and see how diverse it really is. I wish Borderlands 3 had spent a little more time on Pandora, even if I do really love what they did with all the other environments we get to visit.
@@gljake Dude honestly that's one of my main issues. Dispite its roots, this Borderlands game managed to make Pandora feel incredibly generic in a way that was disturbingly unique. It's like they said "Ok we can't impede on the flavor of the other locations so lets just take the most average parts of the planet and go there so that you know for sure it's Pandora."
I first played bl3 in 2020 on a friend's console. I maybe played a handful of hours total over a few days and I couldn't help but be disappointed at how many legendaries I was getting. In a single session, I was getting so many legendaries in one area that I got the same gun to drop anywhere from 5-10 times. It took away the hype of getting an awesome gun and that was the main impression I was left with. Fast forward to last year, I grabbed it while it was included in a humble bundle for a ridiculously low price. Before playing it vanilla, I looked up what mods were available online and stumbled upon redux. That experience was so enjoyable, I didn't even remember the bad taste the game left in my mouth a couple years prior.
I picked up BL3 during the Christmas sale not too long ago. I had really good first impressions of the game because I modded out the dialogue for when I was doing the main story quest.
One of my biggest problems about BL3 is how they added dialogue to the playable characters but do nothing with it except make bad jokes. Compare this to TPS which, despite its flaws, actually gave each of its Vault Hunters character arcs. Aurelia went from being this rich snob who only cared about money to someone who is disgusted at what Handsome Jack became, Timothy went from being an actor to fully becoming Jack and hating himself for it and Athena, where do I even start? The best part is that all of these character arcs fall under the same general theme: money. The writers didn't have to make any big stretches or hero-exclusive missions for these character arcs to work, they naturally fit into the script. BL3 could've done this, but the writers simply didn't and instead made its Vault Hunters glorified yes-men who blow smoke up Lilith and Ava's asses.
The nerfs absolutely killed the game for me. I hated opening the patch notes because it was constantly a wall of things that would no longer be worth using. The nail in the coffin for me was the nerf of Vampyr Moze. I had a super fun build that I was extremely satisfied with that I didn't look anywhere online to find what was good, then they nerfed it. They didn't even make it weaker, they made it so it just flat out didn't work anymore. I went from having so much fun with the game, more than any previous Borderlands, and they 100% took it away from me. It felt like there was no point in finding a new build or character knowing they could just take it away if I was having too much fun. Going to that after BL2 where they tried to find anything they could do to not nerf Bee/Conference Call was so disappointing.
Tbh, this game is one of my favorite games of all time It was just super fun Me and my brother's played it for 3 years I understand the story stuff, but if you just love fun, it's really good.
I haven't played Borderlands 3 but what I get from many examples of the game "Borderlands 2 for the story,humour and good characters..."and "Borderlands 3 for satisfying gameplay and graphics"....now thats not really bad at all...since the first thing I'd look for in a game is if it would be immersive and fun to play...a close second would be the story and the details that make it more iconic and honestly Borderlands 2 has got to be one of the most unique first person shooter games out there...never did I think that so many guns,details,secrets,side stories and DIALOGUES could be added in a game...
I absolutely recommend playing this game if you're looking for good gameplay. If you can turn off the part of your brain that cares about narrative and dialogue and just focus on shooting bad guys and getting cool guns, you're not gonna find too many games more fun than this. Borderlands 2 is also excellent, but BL3 is a massive step up in every department besides the story and some looting mechanics.
Replay-ability for me, from my experience. Thousands of hours in 1 and 2 combined and couple play throughs of pre sequel. I love the technical improvements over the older titles music, gunplay, a little better scaling, and better loot system all in bl3. But it just lacks the memorable story moments that don’t still irk me. Mayas underserved death, the annoying twins, the dialogue in general and voice acting in parts. Idk not bad at all though and if bl4 came out I’d probably preorder lol
@@gljake Are you planning on making more content like this? I just found you and was super bummed that I didn't find you like... next year when I can binge a backlog. Planning to watch the Halo Infinite video next!
@@undisabled1552 hahaha thank you so much dude! it means a ton. Yes! I'm aiming for 2 videos a month for now.. maybe more if I can manage it. I'm hoping to have my 3rd video up on Friday if everything goes to plan! Again I really appreciate your feedback, I'm so glad you enjoyed the video!
@@undisabled1552 absolutely dude! I've been really enjoying putting these videos together.. even more so because of people like you enjoying them! Thanks a ton and I hope you enjoy the future vids.
Gearbox should revamp the Pre-Sequel, go through and rework the farmable bosses, assign dedicated drops etc and just clean it up a bit, maybe add more legendaries and rework the Weapon Grinder perhaps. The Pre-Sequel still has potential!! (The Glitch guns were a good idea) I'd love to run through it again and be able to farm what I want.
I honestly didn’t find borderlands 3 as satisfying as 2 in terms of gun recoil, impact and sound, they just felt less solid and combat was never really that rewarding, didn’t help that borderlands three made really good loot incredibly common, while I don’t like grinding, I definitely feel like they gave you to many options and ones that crushed difficulty easily
I find it interesting that so many different content creators have WILDLY different opinions on the DLCs. Some say they're better than the main game, some say they aren't worth it at all, most of them rank Bounty of Blood as the best, but hey, opinions are opinions.
Story wise: yeah it’s kinda hard to live up to borderlands 2, for me it was still enjoyable and had its moments Gameplay wise: it’s the ultimate borderlands experience, everything just clicks in an awesome way
In my opinion, i really liked the dlc stories. The dlc storylines were so much better than the base game's storyline. Bounty of blood is also my favorite dlc, which i now know is completely opposite of your opinion. Maybe it's just because i main zane and bounty of blood has the lightshow, or because i really love anything cowboy related, but bounty of blood rocks.
I totally agree on the DLC stories! It seems like I'm in the minority on Bounty of Blood, but I will say that if nothing else, I still think it's better storytelling than the base game. Thanks for watching!
Bro I was there since Borderlands 1. Borderlands 2’s story is the best story wise… but Borderlands 3 is the best borderlands game yet. It’s looting, shooting, and gameplay loop is just astonishing
That's true, thanks for the input! There were a lot of cool guns, I probably should have taken the time to mention that. I just couldn't stand the story!
hahahaha. I hear great things about that game, but I think it was removed from Steam on the run up to BL3 and I didn't play it due to that. I seriously doubt ANYTHING could redeem the character of Vaughn from BL3 though.
@@gljake nope. It's still on steam. It's $20 but I'd wait for a sale. You can beat it in one sitting if you got nothing to do all day. Vaughan goes from being a paper pushing, desk clutching, people pleasing lil bitch to the leader of bandits. You have a point about the underwear and cape thing. Not sure what's up with that. He also shows up in one of the BL2 dlc and that takes place after the telltale game. Not sure what that was about cause I didn't finish it.
Yeah it's back on steam now which is great, I think it was removed for a bit when telltale went under though. I will play it someday, I would like to at least not completely despise Vaughan hahah
To be completely honest, Borderlands dialogue was always kinda cringe even back in BL1 but i cant help but laugh at how bad it is at times. So the writers still win i guess, just not in the way they intended lol
Watching this video made me want to play Borderlands 3 again, despite the story I had a lot of fun playing on the console, now I've moved to the PC and the game is really, really cheap. I will definitely buy
Borderlands 3 was (and forever shall be) the WORST borderlands looter/shooter ever! Gearbox under the creepy, amoral shameless - and odd name changing - randy p(r)itchford got extremely lazy and greedy when making B3 and it's DLCs. I do not care about B4. Before B3 the Borderlands universe was wonderful. After B3, it's been a willfully forgettable disaster.
I rather enjoyed BL3, and have spent much more time than others would in this game. The skill trees are just so awesome in this game, and paired with the fact that you can alter your action skills, it allows for some of the most fun builds I've ever seen in Borderlands. In previous games, a level just felt like extra numbers. A higher chance of this. More of that. Every once in a while you got fun and exciting skills, and even some of the basic ones had enough of an effect to make them fun. But this game was REALLY exceptional, and every level felt meaningful. I would've much rather had a new character or two as opposed to more skill trees, because although the skill trees are kinda cool, they just feel like they play off of the other skill trees as opposed to being their own tree. The world design was exceptional with a few bad parts in my opinion. Sanctuary III was cool at first, but ended up being very cramped compared to Sanctuary in BL2. Pandora was kinda bland in my opinion. You only got to see the desert part of pandora, and it got boring after a bit. The Axton-Salvador minigame kinda remedied this by being set in the tundra (also, I will fight people on this, but that minigame was honestly SO fun and idc what you say). But I would've loved to see the highlands, or Opportunity, even if it wasn't for a whole lot. Those areas added a lot. I really wish all of Promethea was like Lectra City. Side alleys and roof crawling as opposed to a few highways that you get to drive around. Lectra City felt a THOUSAND times more open as opposed to the rest of Promethea. Eden-6... we don't talk about Eden-6. The rest of the planets, on the other hand? Absolute bangers. Nekrotefayo and the Hammerlock DLC planet are definitely some of my favorite landscapes in gaming. And mf Minos Prime. Absolutely BEAUTIFUL area, with a hint of creepiness. I loved it. Gameplay wise, it was pretty good. Mayhem 1.0 was dogshit, and I'm glad they changed it, but it wasn't much better. When I first heard about mayhem mode I figured it'd be like "NG+"+. Throw on modifiers like extra health, more shields, etc. But then throw in some crazy stuff. But the mayhem we got was more annoying to play with than it was fun. Eventually you'd spend minutes rerolling modifiers till you got ones you wanted, and it just felt like a chore rather than actual "Mayhem". If BL4 has a mayhem system, gearbox should take a page from Dead Cells' custom mode. Optional modifiers that change the way you approach the game. They also started balancing the guns so much that it felt shitty. You had to grind for a week just to get a good gun to survive mayhem mode with, just for Gearbox to nerf it so you have to grind something else. If gearbox wanted the game to be difficult, they should've implemented UVHM. And the lack of dedicated drops really hurt the game. They eventually added a few, but many drops just couldn't be farmed, and I don't see a reason not to have dedicated drops. Casual players wouldn't notice and grindy players got a reliable way to get gear. And going back to UVHM, why didn't we get a UVHM? I get that BL2 UVHM was abyssmal with the need for slag but... BL3 couldn't fail there because there was no slag. On top of that, Gearbox already had a REALLY good UVHM in The Presequal. I don't understand why they didn't use TPS UVHM instead of BL2 UVHM. It just made no sense to me. And now we get onto the big one. The story. The biggest problem with the story was that it had no sense of direction. With BL2, there's a clear direction, and it starts with Jack. Jack wants to open the vault, something catastrophic will happen if he does, yada yada. Even without character as charismatic as Jack, you can have a good direction. But Bl3 lacks that. The Bandits want to open the vaults... why? I can't even remember tbh. And mind you, I played BL3 A LOT more than I played BL2, and I can still remember Jack's motive. Tyreen and Troy have no real motivation up until the end, and at that point, most of the game is behind you. It doesn't help that most of the game is a fetch quest. Go here, do this, go here, do this. Not like BL2 is much better, but it actually felt like stuff was being accomplished. Not to mention, there were actual stakes. Most of the stuff Jack did actually set you back or made you do something else. Whenever Troyeen do something its a minor inconvenience. Oh Tannis got captured? We'll just rescue her in the very next quest. Oh they set up defenses? Let's get this mcguffin to bypass them. And the humor was just so bad. I think it gets covered well in this vide, but to add onto it, I feel like the game tries to take itself so seriously. "Oh this is our Endgame" (cause that was back when Endgame was relevant) "We gotta be serious." BL2 was funny, but took itself seriously when necessary. This game is all serious until it's time to crack a joke, then back to serious all of the sudden. On the bright side, the DLCs actually had some half decent humor, and Fustercluck genuinely FELT like BL2 humor. The characters... god the characters. You can tell that the idea of this game was "Let's set up BL4 with a new cast of characters so we can rope new audiences in." I mean [spoilers dead ahead but if you're this far in the post I assume you don't care] they killed off Maya because of Ava, which can be cool, but Ava never makes that trade worth it. And the kill of Lilith so she can do.... Magic Siren Magic? And then they hint "she's still out there" and I really don't know what's worse, the fact that her "sacrifice" might not mean anything, or that she had to "sacrifice" herself in the first place. Torgue needed more screen time, and as others have said, came off as more of a warmonger than a caring brute like he was in previous games. All the characters from Tales could've been cut with little to no loss, and a lot less confusion for those who didn't play it. Ava. Overall the characters are unfunny, uncool, or uninteresting. At least BL3 took a page from TPS and gave the playable characters unique lines. Moze was definitely my favorite character of the 4 with her witty reactions. And now... we get... to the absolute monstrosity. That is Tina... My GOD what did they do. First of all, she's ugly, which I get that they aged her up, that's understandable, but I honestly hate looking at her model. Tbf, it's something the game suffers from a lot: plenty of the characters in BL3 were just kinda grotesque, but Tina was horrible. And Tina's character just didn't click for me like it did in BL2. God even the little cameo in TPS was better in my opinion (obligatory "You will die, oh yeah, you're gonna die, die die die die die). Overall, I really enjoyed BL3, and I've considered another playthrough of the game, but the story and characters definitely sucked. I feel like the game gets too much bad rep. If you ignore the "3" in the title and just treat it as a standalone game, it's actually pretty good. But after the great story that was 2, it sorta fell flat. That said, I definitely think BL3 is a great game if you can get past the story.
I agree with most of what you said! I feel like bringing in the characters from Tales was a bit of a misstep, especially given how poor the writing is in this game especially compared to Tales. I think they didn't include UVHM because tbh, TVHM seems a little redundant here. The level cap likely should have been increased to facilitate something like that. And my god, the removal of slag is so welcome. Something I definitely meant to mention in the video. The story being poor here is *almost* forgivable because of how good the gameplay is, the problem is that this is a game that is built to be replayed many times, and I am definitely not interested in sitting through that story more than once without a considerably long break in between. I think the DLC show that Gearbox learned a bit from the backlash the community gave them, and hopefully this means good things are in store for BL4. Although New Tales has me scratching my head...
Oh yeah, I definitely hope Gearbox does a great job with BL4, although I'll probably end up waiting for the reviews to come in before buying it as opposed to preordering like I did with BL3. I feel like UVHM could have been worked in. You can reset TVHM, which allows you to get more quest loot, but you can't reset NVHM. I realized that, since I had most my progress on TVHM, I couldn't go back and redo quests for quest items without resetting most of my unlocks (granted, it's not a big deal, but I like a sense of completeness). I feel like UVHM could've bumped the difficulty up for those that wanted a harder experience without mayhem, and leave TVHM for farming quest drops.
bl3 writing was so fucking unbeareable that i basically speedrunned the game in order to be able to play some endgame without cringy af dudes screaming in my ears. what a shame
BL3 imo seemed rushed and lack luster it was like playing a bad dlc from BL2 which i felt it peaked story and gameplay i use to just crank numbers and enjoyed constant using different guns cause of elemental resistance now im either killing everything or other way around its sad
I really liked Bounty of Blood =3= I liked how it was presented like a stereotypical western with a narrator talking about it like a story about you. I liked the upgrades you’d get that would encourage backtracking to old areas to find secrets, and the set-pieces were wonderful. It feels weird to say that I was looking forward to see how it would play out even though I was pretty sure I already knew how it’d all go down.
Now, this, this is a great review. I miss reviews that actually feel like a person is speaking his mind unfiltered instead of scripted IGN reviews and alike made for UA-cam kids. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel brother, and good luck with the UA-cam Grind.💯
Thank you so much bro! It means so much to me. I am here for the grind hahaha. The response to this video has been far beyond anything I could have imagined for a first upload! I've got more videos in the works now. Bogus, 5-minute-long, cookie-cutter game reviews were a major motivation for me to start making videos like this one! I'm hoping to transition into new game reviews at some point, I'm so tired of companies like IGN giving anything but the most dog-ass games a 7 or above! There just aren't enough trust-worthy sources to inform game purchases anymore. Again I really appreciate the kind words! More content coming soon!
@@gljake With that said, you're gonna be one of my very few favorite reviewers in the upcoming years for sure, I hope I can stick around long enough to remind you of this early stage of the channel and how much worth it it was💯 Don't lose focus on the track, the majority of people underestimate what they can achieve in 5 years and overrate what they can achieve in a month, and they end up destroying their dreams. And Good luck Brother❤🤲🏼
@@amineguts8612 thank you so much bro. I'll remember this! Gotta stay focused, that's for sure. I hope to be around for a long while! And comments like this motivate me to make each video better.. and I really appreciate that man.
Borderlands 3 gameplay, especially end game content, is great. Its level design is great. My main problem is the story, the Calypso Twins I feel would not have gotten away with some of the stuff they did were it not for some key moments. Ava not getting involved, getting Maya Killed and then blaming it on Lilith. The vault hunters being absent in cutscenes that they were clearly present in like when you just kill Troy and presumably your character just sits on the side as they watch Tyreen mop the floor with Ava, Lilith, and Tannis. Anyone remember that moment in borderlands 2 after you kill Angel, Jack comes in, captures lilith and tries to force her to kill the vault hunter in a cutscene being shown in the first person through the vault hunters eyes? It would be better if Gearbox you know did the same thing as Borderlands 2 and had the vault hunter being present in the cutscene even in first person, just to make it feel to the player that their actions have value. That is a small suggestion for how to improve the story beyond you know scrapping 99% of the story.
I don’t think BL3 story and villains are bad, it’s just that we went from Handsome Jack which is one of the best video game villains to Troy & Tyreen which is decent villains but not as good as Jack
1:04. Nope. After playing BL3 there is no way I go back to those badly dated prequels. Gameplay sucks in comparison to BL3 so much that Handsome Jack and the overall story in BL2 or even the worse Prequel-Sequel can not save a dang to make me drop out of BL3 ever again. Only Tiny Tina's Wonderland can work that magic. The gameplay mechanics and engine of BL2 is so outdated and feels less responsive than I had remembered. I tried a couple of times to get back into it, but it was not gonna happen.
Coming from tales from the borderlands to BL3 was the biggest nose dive in writing quality that I have experienced in gaming, BL3 did have a solid gameplay but it just didn’t bring much new to the table to make up for its terrible writing, I think I would rate it a very solid 7/10 they really need to innovate and hire new writers with BL4 if it’s ever a thing.
saying that Borderlands isn't about the story is just so wrong, Borderlands 2 for example, it is often called a masterpiece because of it's story, it is simply perfectly executed, Handsome Jack is such a masterfully created villain, and the Calypso twins are just... bad... it leaves a bad taste on the franchise... yeah, sure, Borderlands 3 excels in gameplay, it is undoubtedly incredible, but the story makes it so we have to basically play the game on mute, I miss good story writing, and I think it is as importy, if not more, than gameplay
Bad take saying that the story doesn’t matter. I feel that’s why this game isn’t as good as 2. I mean the handsome jackpot works bc it has a good story. The story is what made 2 so great and the weighting for all the characters. Bl3 seems sooo forced with most of its dialogue
I'm 50/50 on this. In hindsight, I probably should not have been so quick to say that it doesn't matter _at all_ , but my point is basically that I think the story in BL2 is overrated. It's not bad by any means, but people like to consider it as one of the best stories in any game, and people routinely say Handsome Jack is the best video game villain ever. I think both of those opinions are extremely detached from reality, and they make me wonder if these people have ever played a game like RDR2 or The Last of Us. The story is definitely at least a little important, but it did not detract from my experience all that much because the rest of the gameplay is so good. One thing I didn't put enough consideration into when writing my points on the story is how it's poor quality impacts the game's replayability, and I probably would have docked it a few points there had I thought more about that at the time.
Ava aside, I think Troy getting Maya's powers was a wasted opportunity for a rift in him and his sister's relationship. I wanted to see a real power struggle between the two that would ultimately lead to Troy becoming the true antagonist in the end. I found him slightly less annoying than Tyreen (even funnier), and it would have made for a better twist and better redemption for Maya after his eventual defeat.
For me the biggest issue was de-militarizing the crimson raiders down to nothing but the original vault hunters even though the crimson raiders were meant to be both vault hunters and ex crimson lance soldiers (which were fairly high in numbers, hence why they were called the CRIMSON raiders). This and cutting out the cutscene that made Ava into a decent character (keeping this cutscene would have fixed her character greatly)
Handsome Jack had such a perfect storm of concept, writing, and acting that it made him one of the best antagonist we've seen in gaming, if not modern media. Any BL title following it has a near impossible expectation to live up to, and I don't think they will ever match it again. Any villain they set before us will be judged against Jack, and probably be found lacking. That said, yeah the twins were trash anyway. Lol.
I don't really mind if they made the new villains not live up to Jack. But I wish they didn't make them as bad as the Calypso Twins were. They were genuinely just edgy influencers exhibiting fatherless behavior.
As someone who’s first BL game was BL3, I have a soft spot for it, however, I’m also more of a gameplay person compared to a story person, so I honestly enjoy it a little more than 2, since I don’t pay as much attention to story
Yeah I agree I also thought that in Bl 2 Jack was a bit of an annoying character unironicly because I think some of the story and meaning for things weren’t very apparent especially if I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the story anyways
Thank you so much man. The response to this video has been incredible, I never expected it would gain anywhere near this much traction! I can only hope my future videos perform half this well, honestly. Again I really appreciate the compliment!
Another bad thing about BL3 that you didn't mention is the legendary guns. There's a lot of good and fun ones but they're too common. I recently replayed BL2 and found 2 legendary guns after hours of playing. In BL3 my whole inventory is literally just legendary guns.
totally with you on this one. I actually had this in my script for this video originally but I guess something happened and i ended up leaving it out in the final cut. this game should have included pearls at a minimum, but really could have done with rebalancing the entire rarity system because it takes a lot of the hype out of looting when basically everything is orange.
It wasn't like this at launch. I remember constantly looking for upgrades, sometimes even using green weapons. Now, they throw legendarys at you like candy and you can easily use some of them for 10+ levels. They completely subverted their main gameplay loop. It leads to other issues. You no longer have to worry about ammo. Hectic fights are now trivial. You lose out on all of those narrow escapes you could have had, which to me are half the fun. You don't have to put much thought into skill points, because they really don't matter when you're carrying around that kind of arsenal. Through normal mode I rarely used abilities because they feel useless. At launch, you needed them.
Yea I agree with this. Part of what makes the game easier than previous ones. You've always got some overpowered shit that can rip through enemies. And I literally never once used any Golden Keys or anything.
Gunplay? Incredible. Its very satisfying and responsive. Weapon variety? Fun but also feels limited at times. I often find myself picking up the same guns with very minor differences or just throwing away guns I've picked up but never touched because a better version is available. Character classes? Meh. Not as interesting as BL2. Bl2 had some really crazy and fun classes with insane builds. Bl3 not having any DLC chars really sucks and the 4 you get are just..dull. Story? God awful but shooting is fun so who cares? The story feels generic and rushed, its just another evil corporation trying to find a vault story.
After hours of bl3 I recently went back to bl2 and was blown away by how much better the voice acting and script writing is. So many hilarious, or at least amusing lines and situations. The actors in the voice booths of bl2 were having genuinely good times. I agree that in bl3 Vaughn is over the top but not funny. Side characters are all the same brand of over-the-top but not funny. Claptrap has lost all his humour. Tannis, Lilith, Eva and Lorelie are all strangely boring (Tannis was truly weird in bl2). Torgue is just brutal and violent rather than also being oddly sweet and crazy. In the end, to me, bl3 felt oddly joyless.
Yes! This game's writing has totally removed itself from the charm that earlier Borderlands games had. It really is a shame. The gameplay is great, but the story is supposed to be the glue that holds together the gameplay. So everything really feels all over the place at times. I still think it's a ton of fun to play despite that though.
One of the main writers, Anthony Burch had left between BL2 and 3. One of the reasons the story's less than great
Me too ..went back after 500h in bl3 ..went back to bl2 ..and man i felt home ...
@@LIKEMIKE593 Interesting. I wondered about that. They had a talent drain then. Claptrap actor, I believe, left before 3 also. And Handsome Jack actor isn't as involved of course. I'm convinced there was a lot of fun and talented improv in the voice booths for bl2. You can't convince me that "Hey, how... ah, these pretzels suck... so how's your day been, buddy?" was pre-scripted..
They deffo did the cringe stuff on purpose, I find it absolutely hilarious
great gameplay, bad story. also ava.
lol.. so true.
Ava cringe. Also boy with oversized head and girl hair. No thx bruh.
Troy is a major cringe fest. Bro could look good as hell and I'd still hate him.
@@gljake both the calipso twins are cringe, but I think ava takes the cake 🎂 bratty AF and gets Maya killed.
🤣At least troy has the good boss battle theme✅🎶
True! Ava is definitely annoying as hell hahahahaha
In BL2, there was a lot of moments where I'd sit in front of the door I'm supposed to go through so I can let everyone finish talking and hear the dialogue because I killed everyone too fast. In BL3, there's a lot of waiting around for the characters to finish talking so they can open the door, tell me where to go, or spawn the enemies
EXACLTY. This is extremely boring when you're playing ng+
I liked the dialogue in Borderlands, I didn't like the infinite zombies, hoardes of zombies no thanks, hoardes of soldiers or tanks 👍
For whatever reason I was actually bored playing through the campaign the first time in BL 3.. I never got bored in BL 1. & 2
Recently started replaying and i couldnt be more annoyed. Why do i need to keep talking to you? Just do the thing! Open the door, give me the vehicle, press the button, i dont need to talk to you! Youre capable!
Incidentally, this is true for the pre-sequel aswel, lots of moments in the story when the road ahead is outright closed to you until the NPC stops talking.
I think I would have been ok with the twins as villains if they would have went in another direction. Skipping over the fact that Tyreen took Lilith's powers without killing her, and Troy turned Maya into ash when he took hers. If they would have had troy, in a moment of weakness and desperation, consume Tyreen. This, in turn, would have killed Tyreee but it would have also put Troy into a position of power that was far far beyond anything that he ever had felt before.
Troy should have been the final boss, not Tyreen.
You know its really interesting, when first playing through this game it actually felt like for a second, they were going to take this route. But then of course, they didn't. Totally agree with you here.
@@gljake During the mission that ends with the Aurelia fight, there is dialogue between Tyreen and Troy that really makes it seem like he's not happy with her being the better of the two of them and I was so sure there would be a betrayal of some sort
They set up Troy's betrayal and then did absolutely nothing. For a moment I was engaged with the plot.
All of Eden-6 they were building up to troy potentially becoming the villain, hell i think troy has the BEST boss theme, (not to mention the funniest glitch when bl3 first came out), Troy felt like such wasted potential, there could have been so much more. In Eden 6 there was even the side mission where they ask YOU to blow up the others base, just cause they were getting pissy with eachother, so much so they didn't even seem to care that their base was blown up in the end, just that the other one was destroyed...
I played hundreds of hours of Borderlands 2 as a kid. Once Borderlands 3 came out I just couldn't get into it. I played through it fully twice and never touched it again. I can't put my finger on it but something is missing from BL3.
I think there are some intangibles in this game that turned off a lot of hardcore BL fans, but I really couldn't put my finger on it either while I played through it. I can understand where you're coming from, though.
And that’s why I’m playing through Borderlands 2 over again because I love it’s gameplay, skills, and story. The dialogue can be cringe at times but majority they ducking nailed it in that one.
Sounds like you probably just grew up and dont like this formula as much anymore.
Same here. I played through BL 1&2 hundreds of times but I only played through BL 3s campaign once with one character and never played it again. It just didn’t draw me in
@@maynardburger or Borderlands 3 is just bad.
The problem I have is replayability, which the borderlands series always had, having to go back to sanctuary a gazillion times to listen to the same bad story that you can’t skip, really hurts the game.
This is so true. Borderlands really is all about replayability, and although the gameplay is awesome sitting through more COV broadcasts and bad Vaughan jokes is a hard pass from me, at least right now.
@@gljake being on pc i found the easy way out was to download a save editor
first reset your skills in game, better safe than sorry
now create 3 copies of your save (with a cleared story of course)
use the editor to change the class in said 3 copies
now you can go to town with all 4 classes by playing the game once (sorry console players)
@@robertomacetti7069 Good idea! This is what I'll do the next time I revisit this game.
I think that is the main reason the people didn’t stick with this one as long. It’s a farmers dream but the old loop of OP levels and UTVHM is gone. I don’t miss them, but some people really do.
@@sterlingwbishop you still have to grind for good rolls on legendary gear, so... whatever, there is stuffs to do
The story, joy, and humor of BL3 really killed the game for me, I still have yet to beat the game fully. I just can't bring myself to do it, it feels like I'm being dragged through glass from gun fight to gun fight.
Worth it with a friend and turn dialog off.
My biggest issue is how.... God awful the dialogue is throughout the WHOLE game. I think this is one of those cases where you have a writing team that absolutely does NOT deserve it's job and the opportunity it was given. The other thing is how it's at odds with a lot of things in the franchise. The Pre Sequel/Tales From The Borderlands are retconned. Aurelia? The character that "Isn't outright evil" and was too ashamed to even talk to her brother in TPS, and goes through a character arc where she starts to realise how bad of a person she is and feel bad about it? (Like after the whole Fecility thing and the way she starts to see herself in Jack and how she starts to hate him)? Well, this game just retcons that for another generic "Villain of the planet" take.
The whole "War is coming, we need all the vault hunters we can get"? Gone.
Not just that, but there's so many little details throughout the whole plot. This game feels like some horrible self insert fanfic they got from DeviantArt or Reddit.
My other issue is how Mayhem 2.0 ruined a lot of the balancing. A LOT of gear and even classmods and builds were left behind. And God, the whole end-game thing was a mess throughout most of the game's life cycle. The Pre-Sequel had handled balancing almost perfectly, how can they get it so wrong?
And it's a big shame, honestly. This game does a lot right technically, but this new wave of Borderlands content (Specially New Tales) has kind of ruined the world for me.
They really have done some damage to the IP with some of these ridiculous decisions, that's for sure. They clearly still know exactly how to make the game itself fun, but between this and the atrocity of New Tales they have some serious work to do for the next full release to get a lot of folks back on board with the franchise.
Thanks for the comment!
@@gljake I thought the tales game was written and developed by the Quebec team and not the team that works on the mainline games.
Not sure honestly.. it was absolutely terrible though lol. My hope is that they hire some competent writers for bl4 either way.
@@gljake honestly, I haven't had high hopes for gearbox as a whole since lawbreakers. Seems like they struck gold with the half life expansions and bl2 and just started deliberately forgetting everything they did right since the pre sequel launched.
@@user-wj6jh1cd5n it does seem that way.. hard to believe it's been over 10 years since they put out BL2. I hope they figure out a way to return to that form.
Bounty of Blood is my second favourite DLC. I thought the wedding one was the worst.
the story content that was cut from the game makes me feel so bad for what we ended up getting. Maya died for no reason and her death fell so flat. They cut this beautiful conversation between Lilith and ava at Mayas funeral and it made me like ava. I dont know if gearbox thought that touchy Feely stuff didn't belong in borderlands but I think a bit of seriousness would of made the game so much better. We ended up getting butts fart jokes and a poop gun skin.
Absolutely! Gearbox really needs to learn that a serious tone can absolutely be pulled off in this universe!!
Touchy feely?!
Like they did with Tiny Tina Dlc, where they rekt my heart bringing back Roland just so i could grieve again with Tina..
Nah, nah, they know how to do that, they just didnt want to for Bl3.
Bl3 is seaons 5(ish), 6, 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones, great gameplay and visuals for the first one, and great cinematography and visuals for the later. But story and characters are getting more stupid every seconds.
I just picked this game back up for the first time since launch. It's super fun to play but the main story is... something. I love Vaughn, he's a bromigo for sure. Troy and Tyreen are aweful but the kind of aweful they're supposed to be, if they weren't so annoying would we want to kill them as much as we do? My biggest gripe is Ava and how they did Maya dirty like that. Ava, Maya's apprentice, is directly responsible for her teachers death. Instead of doing some introspection and growing as a character she lashes out at Lilith like it's her fault and proceeds to whine for the rest of the game. For some reason she is in the Inner Circle of Sanctuary giving input on decisions that influence the lives of entire planets, why?! She's a literal child with no credentials at all. She's not a Siren until the very end, she's not a Vault Hunter, she has zero connections to Sanctuary or anyone there outside of Maya who is now dead. Yet somehow apparently Lilith wants her to become the LEADER of Sanctuary? Excuse me while I blow my brains out. Absolutely none of it makes any sense to me. Even putting aside my hatred for that character, her involvement in the events of the story seem so forced and out of place to me that it's appalling. And don't even get me started on the ending! Lilith just flies off into the moon in a giant burst of flame, cuts to credits, and starts singing "This girl is on FIRE!". The ending genuinely felt like an insult to my intelligence.
Sorry for the rant. The game in genuinely fun which makes the bad story bits all the more frustrating as they keep the game from being what it could be.
Thanks for the video, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I totally agree with your take on Ava. I was trying to keep this video as spoiler-free as I could have or I would have dived a little deeper into Ava's character for sure. It is incredibly frustrating how she is basically responsible for the death of Maya and then like you said, just bitches and whines for the rest of the game and then inexplicably becomes a Siren, after doing absolutely nothing to earn it. I seriously hoped that Maya would have been brought back towards the end.. because the way the game ends now, it definitely feels like Ava is going to be a major part of the next game. And yeah.. the ending of this game was brutal.
Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate it.
@@gljake And dont forget! THEY GAVE THE LEAD OF THE SANCTUARY TO THE LIL BRAT INSTEAD OF US 😂😭
Borderlands 3, a game with possibly the best original soundtracks and great non-soundtrack songs (Making the long drive to Apollyon Station more bearable) includes "Girl on Fire" at one of its most important points of the story. A song that was released ***2 WEEKS BEFORE BORDERLANDS 2*** was released on Steam! What was the thinking there ? I can't skip that cutscene fast enough (Thanks for letting us skip cutscenes, Gearbox)
I can’t stand Vaughn💀
@@ChilledPsycho Also if Lilith was insistent on choosing an npc siren to be the next leader, the smartest woman on the planet who was retconned to be a siren was standing right next to the literal immature child that blamed Lilith to begin with.
You say the enemies are good in bl3. I agree with you but in bl2 on your second play through going into true value hunter the enemies are upgraded/evolved and look different. It makes things feel refreshing and gives alot more replay value because it gives a feel of fighting new enemies.
That's true. TVHM in BL2 definitely seems more interesting, but it's also entirely necessary while that's not really the case in bl3
Not really. To me giving a psycho armor and a Goliath a rocket launcher doesn’t make them new it’s just a psycho with armor and a Goliath with a rocket launcher. It’s nothing like the remnant franchise where you will never play the same route twice. There every playthrough you get different quests, different bosses, different rewards every playthrough if you want to see everything you have to play the story at least twice and there’s even more to see if you decide to increase the difficulty. In bl2 all there is to see is a psycho with armor and a Goliath with a rocket launcher and that’s it
Even if a game has little story, it doesn't excuse very very very poor writing. Especially if that writing effects the player psychologically while playing. If it's so bad that it makes people want to switch languages (or in me and a friend's case, just turning the voice volume all the way down), then that's extremely awful. What makes it even worse is the fact that you can't skip dialogue or story elements. You have to hear these same things over and over again every time you play. And in a game that encourages that, that's another major issue.
BL2 writers leaved, that's all you need to know.
I'm on chapter 8 and I forgot whats happening in the story
The writting was meh, for me the vault hunters are so fun to hear, most of the time, I like mozes gameplay, but hate her voicelines, it's like hearing a squeaker back from the cod days on Xbox, but had a blast playing Zane and fl4k so much that I forget about the cringe story
3 was decent. 2 was masterpiece but the first one will always be my favorite. The atmosphere and music was unbeatable, had a bitter sweet lonely vibe.
There is definitely something very special about BL1! It was such a unique, unforgettable game.
Ayyy, same. My favorite bit of music from it is the main menu music.
Borderlands 1 will always hold a special place in my heart. My friend and I played that game for hoouuurs co op. Same with my brother. I still go back to it every now and then.
Except 1 and 2s gunplay was garbage, these are looter shooters, gameplay and loot system is obviously the 2 most important elements of a looter shooter and bl3 is best game in the series
such an old rusty style. everything looks like its held together by blood and sheet metal in that game. and the acoustics youll hear when your idle. great feeling the game gives.
I think the main issue of the writing/humour of bl3 is that gearbox forgot what made the writing of the previous games work. I’m not sure what the word for it would be but the “humour” was always used to contrast the horrible situations that were in the games and gave room to breath when necessary. For example the Goliath quest from sawtooth cauldron, you help a bandit try and get off planet only for them to be crushed by their transport. Another is visiting jacks grandma’s house where you find out he was abused, with jack laughing at the bait and switch he pulled. Or jack giving you a quest to literally kill yourself (in game). However when major plot points were happening the thin coat of humour got pulled away, when Roland was killed there wasn’t any humour in even any of the related side quests. It knew when to be respectful. What made the humour special was how morbid it was to have the cringy lines in horrible situations.
Also I felt the BL3’s main campaign/story dragged on way too long, I feel they could have ended the game with the Troy fight then made necrodefayo, or however it’s spelt, a side/post game quest.
Agreed! They hit the right balance between dark humor and absurd humor in BL2, and they just went all the way to absurdity with BL3.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I absolutely love BL3, but I honestly think BL2 is one of the greatest games ever made. It'd be hard for anybody to follow that
So true! It's hard to follow up on a masterpiece.
why do you love it...
@@gljake masterpiece or not, this game just… really sucked ass. Not even a moderately good story or characters lol
@@mrsexy5680 if youre playing borderlands strictly for the story you shouldnt be playing borderlands, you should be playing the last of us for the 11th time
@@Thabba76 gameplay was bad too lmao, the entire game felt like a total cakewalk compared to the other 2, characters were cringy and uninteresting, and the only thing they nailed were the jokes… by making every single one of them so fucking cringe, the game sounded better on mute.
Another problem imo is the overabundance of legendary items. They are dropping like crazy in this game, to the point the rarity system loses it's value.
Why would you even look at green, blue or most purple items, when legendaries are so common and powerfull?
After Jack probably one of the best villains ever made the twins felt just sad and also ava
Totally agree with you!
story 100% matters. also the graphics are too much in 3 compared to 2. i like the desert vibes of 1 and the snow vibes of 2. 3 doesnt have a consistent vibe other than annoying. also unlimited legendaries starting at level 1 is so boring.
The narrative of the 2nd game is something to appreciate so much more in retrospect after this one. Fun as it is, they really screwed the pooch on leaning way to hard into an irreverent sense of humor that just ended up coming off as though damn near everything was treated as a joke. In BL2 I remember being surprised when, after Jack turned in to laugh about some guy whose eyes he removed with a spoon, I spoke to on of the people in Sanctuary who mentioned that was actually his father who Jack killed. It was just crazy how the small-talk dialogue had that sort of connection to what main characters would say, and there were quite a few examples of this sort of thing in BL2. Jack was such an amazing asshole but he also had depth, as did damn near every other character, and those little moments of discoverable dialogue with various NPC's lent depth to the world and narrative. I can't really think of another game that pulls it off in that type of way, so to be fair BL3 had some big shoes to fill on that front.
I think it's very important for BL to have at least a passable story as it is a game that is built around heavily replayability. It's a huge shame that they were unable to make that happen here, because they got it so right with BL2 like you said. BL2 may not be Read Dead Redemption or The Last of Us in terms of narrative, but it does what it needs to do exactly how it should. The story shouldn't be too overbearing, but it needs to be good where it counts.
@@gljake I completely agree. With BL2 it feels like the devs really sank their teeth into making it as if it was a creatively fulfilling experience overall for them. BL3 give the impression that the narrative team had little interest in the project other than churning out enough to make their deadlines. Not to hate on BL3 though, things could have turned out much worse all things considered. Your vid actually gives me a bit more appreciation for the 3rd game, much appreciated!
I'm still hearing NPC lines in Sanctuary I've never heard before. How many did they record, I wonder. I haven't heard the one you mention though. That's very cool.
@@stephenhardy4158 I've only heard repeated lines like maybe twice! I bet I just lucked out with hearing that line, and there's no telling how many I'll miss after playing. It really is one hell of a game, I've been utterly hooked since I started playing.
@@gljake replay value is completely dependent on gameplay/gunplay and loot, story has nothing to do with replay value
Best things in this game are Zane’s voice lines and Zane’s absurd damage
Base game Zane and DLC Zane are practically two different characters
I really liked Bounty of Blood, it’s setting and overall story was pretty cool ik this dlc is a 50/50 in the community but i think the dlc was fine
But what we can all agree on is the main story, dear lord what happened with that story
It definitely has people polarized, that's for sure! I don't know what happened with the main story.. but lets hope it never happens again!
Whoever wrote the DLCs needs to be the writer for 4, the DLCs were surprisingly well written
@@alexf0723 the dlcs are amazing and have a great story
Yeah, I didn’t understand the complaints lodged in the video, especially with regards to the narrator-he is the best fucking thing about the DLC.
The endgame scaling was done better in 3 than any other game (solo player). Highest diversity of viable endgame builds. Best engine and gameplay. For me, that makes it the best in the series.
I think this is a great assessment. The endgame is what any serious Borderlands player is there for, any the gameplay is so good that casual players will have a ton of fun along the ride too.
Exactly, BL3 is by far the best for me who spent thousand of hours farming in various BL games.
@@Ilestun Totally. I found this game to be so much more satisfying to play as I reached the higher levels than I did in Borderlands 2, even though I think I still like BL2 better overall.
@@gljake At the highest difficulty, there was very little builds available in BL2. To me that was its biggest flaw. BL3 was the exact opposite and thats why its by far my favorite.
But dont get it wrong.......I spent countless hours on BL2 and this is still one of my best game ever.
@@Ilestun Yeah this is totally true, BL3's build variety is seriously impressive. I have a feeling that BL3 will age very well, and maybe one day I'll look back on it as my favourite.
If I had to say SOMETHING nice about this and New Tales from the Borderlands, it's that between Jakob and Hammerlock and the Tediore Soldiers (specifically the mexican standoff) is that deep down, there is still some remnants of original series, even if it's only through like, one person that wrote those.
Saying the story doesnt matter means you didnt appreciate handsome jack and your opinion is as bad as vaughn.
No, story never matter that much in video-game. Gameplay all the way everytime. And BTW great vilain not equal good story everytime anyway
I know Ava and maya get mentioned a lot but I feel Typhon was also done the dirty hyped up so much and then....ends with a whimper, gameplay wise I wish they had a auto trash pickup option. I do think it's about time VH were given unique dialogues from other characters and the fact in cutscenes the VH was not part of it
Totally agree. Typheon was actually a pretty interesting dude but we didn't see enough of him, and then for him to be related to the calypsos like that was brutal. And yeah, I really wish I would have touched on the disappearing vault hunters in the cutscenes. It seems like for as badass as we're supposed to be, it makes little to no sense that we can't step in and do something about whatever is going on.
This game does feel tedious at times without an auto trash option or loot filter.
@@giansideros I have been watching UA-camrs trying to get god roll items and the amount of attempts is mind boggling, for a god roll revolter I think he was over 8000 attempts or something
18:03 Thank god you addressed this. The entire time you where saying the good things, I was just here thinking about how it's a shame that the story is so bad that it literally balances out all the pros. I had a hard time getting through the first playthrough, and barely got through the second. I honestly had a harder time getting through BL3 than I did with the pre-sequel, due to how hard it was to get into. To put it into perspective, I probably ran through BL2 at least 2 dozen times.
Borderlands 2 and Pre-sequel I have played through multiple times.
The BL3 cutscenes were soooo bad they HAD to put in a skip option 😂
It's fun, but Ava's whole part in the main story really messed it up
I think Troy and Tyreen were decent enough villains though. Definitely not good enough to top Handsome Jack, but I'll give them some rest, considering Handsome Jack is one of the BEST villains in gaming
I think the DLCs improved in that area, though.
Guns, Love, and Tentacles is fun. Great seeing Gaige back, and I loved the wedding and cosmic horror stuff
I haven't started Handsome Jackpot, so I don't really know
Bounty of Blood was AMAZING. Such an interesting little story and the fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetic is cool as hell
And Fustercluck gives depth to Krieg, one of my favorite characters in the entire series. Also pretty glad Maya can retcon herself back into the story. What a Chad like move
While we're definitely in disagreement on Bounty of Blood's overall quality, I do agree that the aesthetic was impressive and that the story was a great change of pace from the obnoxious garbage pushed on us in the base game. I hope that if nothing else, BoB taught Gearbox that it is completely fine for Borderlands to take on a more serious, mature tone. I just think the pace of the narrative needs to keep up with the gameplay!
I totally agree with you on Guns, Love and Tentacles and Fustercluck. While I wish Fustercluck had more content to speak of, what it does have was actually pretty incredible to play through. You should definitely play Handsome Jackpot! It was by far my favourite.
@@gljake I got the Season Pass Bundle on Xbox a few weeks ago, and I'm playing through them all on Mayhem 11, so I just have to do Fustercluck and Handsome Jackpot
It's really hard, honestly, it took me a solid 20 minutes to beat the Wendigo
Definitely can't wait to play the other DLCs though
Vaughn wasn't that annoying in the game he comes from, Tales from the Borderlands. this game made him that annoying.
I hit level 72 before finishing Psycho Krieg
Also, TVHM is for Guardian Ranking. Buy the DLC on sale, my cousin bought the Season Pass for me. I wouldn't get Arms Race unless it's on sale.
The script seems to be written by university kids.
Vaughn was quirky cool in Tales, but he's just a cringey douche in BL3.
I'm not surprised to hear that!
And yes, Guardian Rank is something I wish I would have touched on in this video. Season pass on sale is probably worth it! I didn't much care for arms race either, though.
For me as a long time borderlands fan bl3 while i really liked it, it was the main story and legendarys that made it somewhat of a disappointment for me doesn't need much explanation if you've played the story lmao. They kinda ruined the hype of getting a legendary, bl2 you could play for 20 plus hours and maybe get 3 legendary drops enless farming specific bosses. This made getting one randomly a big deal and a real hype moment now bl3, you can legit get 100 legendarys in a half hour of playing with lootsplosion modifiers just walking around a mob spawn area. And the sheer amount of boring or near useless legendarys are kinda off putting i don't pick up like 19 out of 20 legendary weapons i find. And the lack of another rarity over just legendary. Bl2 had white green blue purple then reddish purple (or eridium rarity) legendary then pearlessence the more rare rarity just made it really addicting to hunt for them. Most the dlc are really good and even the worst dlc in my opinion has better story then the main story of bl3. And Vaughn was a completely ruined character he was an extremely likeable character in tales from the borderlands but they just threw his intire personality out the window for that abomination.
I really debated whether I was going to mention what you're saying about the legendary drop rate! On one hand, it was pretty satisfying to get all these cools guns constantly, but on the other hand, it really removed that feeling of excitement when you see the orange glow pop out of an enemy or chest. I think this game would have done itself a favor by adding some higher loot drop rarities, especially through the end-game.
Glad you mentioned the skill tree's being locked behind a dlc/pay wall, I came back to borderlands after sometime to check out all the dlc's cause I had preordered the ultimate addition hoping to enjoy eveything AND SURPRISE SURPRISE IT DON'T COME WITH THE LAST DLC THE DIRECTORS CUT WITH THE EXTRA SKILL TREE'S.
Yeah it was a huge misstep for them to not include new characters instead... And multiple season passes is definitely something I should have brought up in the video hahaha I'm so tired of that trend
I very rarely see a reviewer speak with complete honesty, I hope to see this "from the heart" type reviewing continue when you inevitably get bigger.
I seriously appreciate you saying that. One of my biggest motivations for doing this is to help normalize long-form game reviewing that is honest and to the point. I find most mainstream reviewers tend to write up a quick 5-10 minute piece about a game that just uses cookie-cutter language and in many cases, is afraid to upset the viewer with a contradicting opinion. I aim to set myself apart from that! I'm glad you enjoyed and again, I really appreciate your kind words. More videos coming soon!
great description of Lucien and I totally agree. I first thought of words like 'passionate' and 'real', but 'from the heart' seems to be the perfect description! love seeing what this guy has to offer next
@Levi vBI appreciate that so much dude. This is something I've put off trying to do for years, so I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed this video.
Next video should be up Thursday! It's a long one .. lol.
@@gljake you just earned a sub from this comment. Love the review style and the willingness to be honest. I might even get back into borderlands 3 after watching this
@@austinjanes2263 thank you bro. keeping it real is everything!
Still playing Borderlands 2 again and again... Played Borderlands 3 twice and walked away. Story was aweful, had no charm... Legendary weapons never felt legendary....or worth keeping.... 2 levels later your looking at greens with better stats.... Maps were ok but not epic. Killing Maya? What were they thinking. Borderlands 4 better make up gor it
BL3 gunplay is top notch. Say what you will about the rest of it.
Someone clearly has no appreciation for classic westerns. Call me old and stogy, but Bounty of Blood was probably my second favorite of the DLCs. It's certainly more fully realized than the horribly underbaked Fustercluck.
I respectfully disagree with you on the placement of bounty of blood, as I quite enjoyed the change of pace and the ideas behind it. Call me biased as I am a fan of westerns, but I felt the story was pretty fun and a nice take on some of the “cliches” we have come to know of westerns over the years. The environment is pretty cool, with a blend of traditional Japanese and classic western. The narration wasn’t all that grating to me, and I quite liked the presentation of it being in a “story” format, as if your legacy will be remembered to be told for years. The weapons it added were pretty good too, with the standouts being the complex root, light show and unkempt harold to name a few. Overall I just liked the dlc and found myself smiling as the credits rolled. Otherwise I agree on everything else (Seriously the main story had so much potential…)
Good day 👍
Hey, you are far from the only one who disagrees with me there! It seems like a very polarizing DLC. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Personally I really enjoyed the game, it’s my fav in the series. B2 is only so favorable because jack is an iconic villain but 3 was awesome
This is true - if B3 even came close to matching the quality of B2's writing it would easily surpass it overall.
No no not at all
i also prefer the difficutly, rarity of guns and the fact that most good weapons in bl2 arent even gold rarity
@@minzekatze what? The only great weapons that aren’t golds would be like the grog nozzle, pimpernel and the interfacer and the sandstorm on some builds right? Other than that the DPUH, the badaboom, the fastball and lightning grenades, Norfleet, Lyuda etc are all gold
Borderlands wasn’t really bout the story but Handsome Jack one of the greatest villains of all time. You should play the first tales though they did Vaughn dirty
IMHO all out of 10:
BL2: story 11, game play 10, weapons 9, farming 10, replayability 10, voice acting 10- overall 10
BL3: story 0, gameplay 11, weapons 9, farming 6, replayability 5, voice acting 5-overall 8 (due to gameplay pulling it way up)
Also the amount of Raid Bosses. There were only three, unless you count Vermivoris in the DLC that has Ava’s podcast thing. Borderlands 2 had 10 Raid Bosses I think.
Terramorphus, Hyperius, Vermivorous, Voracidous, Dexiduos, Pyro Pete, Master Gee, Son of Crawmerax, The Invincible Dragons (counting them as 1), and Haderax. Yep, 10 Badass Raid Bosses!
The amount of content in 2 is ways above 3.
Build diversity etc also no comparison. I still make new builds in 2 till today :O
Well my favorite char is Maya, now look where she has gone... :S
I can admit my love for the borderlands series & the scenery is the only thing that kept me attached to this game. Part of what i loved about boderlands was the story it told along with the jokes and B3 seems like they focused more on trying to be funny than the story. Like cmon i just wanna know what happened after Borderlands 2 but ig we'll never know.
Totally agree! Hopefully BL4 gets it right...
I feel like Tyreen and Troy could've been interesting and intimidating villians if they were A) treated as proper threats and didn't let us have the biggest plot armour ever B) nerfed them some. They had too much and finally C) made them bashful and playful, but lean out of the hip streamer dialogue and into the cult leader ideology. Let them be serious and malicious at times, and like Jack leave us to live just to fuck with us instead of not even acknowledging our existence, until we push him to his absolute limit and he wants us eradicated. Really divulge that backstory more, without spoiling it, to have hindsight.
Also, Maya (and Ava because she ended up being a lil bastard) needed that scrapped funeral scene. If you're gonna kill a major charcater it needs to be treated seriously and somberly, like the sidequest that had you going to people around Sanctuary to tell them what happened to Roland, and even hearing dialougie of citizens saying "Roland's dead? No that can't be true" and stuff like that.
Borderlands may be known for silly and jokey stories with absurd elements, but they had serious and weighty moments that weren't brushed off as well. They had WEIGHT. Borderlands 3 needed more weight to the story, because it just ends up feeling light and hollow despite being longer then all three past games.
Edit: I actually loved Bounty of Blood. The pace mix-up was jarring but welcome. The more serious and less borderlands-esque story was quite enjoyable for me. I feel like it was a massive step up narratively from all other BL3 DLCs. Of course, narrative isn't everything, however the weapons and gear introduced can be super fun to use as well.
Edit 2: not saying the game is bad. I just liked the stories of BL2 and TPS and felt like we were let down. It's great gameplay and I enjoyed it, but the story sucked all my enjoyment everytime somethime dumb happened
I seriously agree with your point on Tyreen and Troy. Cult leader villains have tons of potential to be seriously intriguing. As an example I really enjoyed the villain from Far Cry 5. And it's especially disappointing because they very clearly know how to make a villain fit in with the boisterous writing style of Borderlands as we saw with Handsome Jack. I don't think it's possible to overstate how important getting this right is, and Borderlands 3 just gets it all wrong. And as you said, it totally ruins the immersion.
I didn't know there was a planned funeral scene for Maya! That would have been huge... especially if they handled Ava well. That's a shame. And you're totally right, not everything needs to be an outrageous joke in Borderlands. I wish they had understood this more clearly. And while I obviously didn't enjoy Bounty of Blood, I think your thoughts on it really speak to them starting to figure out that it's okay for Borderlands to take on a more serious tone. I hope this trend continues in the right direction for the next game.
IF BL4 takes a little more serious approach I wouldnt be mad. They really leaned into the "comedic" dialogue in BL3 and a lot of it missed. BL2 was a classic, but the gameplay, and guns are better in 3. Yet, it misses on the "IT" factor or the "feel" of the game that 2 had, but I think that is largely nostalgia.If both games came out today, no one would argue that BL3 is better except for those looking for a great story in a looter shooter...
One massive change they did which ruined borderlands 3 was adding multiple health bars. It complete destroys the feal of how strong a gun is. Hear me out. When an enemy has one health bar it allows you to understand the numbers on the card of the weapons much better. When you see a number on a gun you know exactly how much damage it will do in relation to the single health bar. With multiple of multiple diff types it just turns small enemies into a walking billboard of health bars. It crowds the screen on top of ruining the perception of what is strong.
16:49 Unpopular opinion I guess but I actually liked this dlc .3. It was different. Kinda made me feel like I was in a western movie maybe. Well a sci fi western XD still. Liked it. Didn’t like guns love and tentacles tho. Like it was okay but…well it was okay.
Also real quick I should mention that you shouldn’t listen to him on the “don’t play the bounty of blood dlc” some of the best weapons in the game are in that dlc. Like the unkempt Harold for example. So I’d still play it if you want good gear. Cause a good amount of the meta weapons are locked behind that dlc
I don't think its an unpopular opinion! but from my perspective, the type of people worried about getting meta weapons aren't going to listen to what I have to say anyway! My thoughts on that DLC are directed more towards a casual player.
@@gljake oh alright .3.
I picked this up for $8 a few weeks ago and have really been enjoying it, but man, the dialogue is so awful I'm actually dreading a possible second playthrough having to sit through everything again. Well worth it though, I'm just about finished with the main questline and it's a ton of fun for the reasons you outlined above.
I do think the dialogue is objectively more cringe than the predecessors, but some minor QoL issues really exacerbate it and make it way worse than it needed to be. I remember in BL1/2 my strategy every playthrough was just to pick up every quest in town, take a quick glance at the map to figure out what to do in what order, and then start moving towards my first marker. During my time driving or running, THAT's where the cringe dialogue was delivered over the radio and I could make progress or do other stuff while the writers went nuts with the cringe. I didn't mind bad dialogue in the previous games because long dialogue didn't prevent you from making progress.
That is NOT the case in BL3. You are forced to stand there, listen to all the horrible nonsensical dialogue in it's entirety, and then to add insult to injury half the time the NPCs will "hand" you a quest item after they finish their drunken babbling, so if you tried to get ahead of things and get on the road early like you could in previous games, you had to turn around and go all the way back to the NPC to receive the explosives or whatever. By level 5 I just started alt+tabbing out of the game to do something else while the characters were talking. I feel like I'm strapped to a chair with my eyes taped open being forced to listen to the dialogue as a weird form of torture. I feel like the game is intentionally holding me hostage.
To make matters worse, the fast travel UI got a large downgrade from the previous iterations, only showing your active quest markers, forcing you to go to the quest screen, select a new quest, then go back to the map and zoom out to see where your new markers are, and then navigate the clunky fast travel UI. It makes overworld efficiency unnecessarily difficult and clunky. Why, gearbox? WhY? How are you so good at making the extremely difficult stuff, but then drop the ball on the most simple design elements you had nailed by BL1? Why go out of your way to go backwards with your design? You were so close to getting it perfect!
These issues could be almost completely overlooked with some simple changes. Allow the player to spam space to skip dialogue. Allow the player to retrieve quest items and get on the road immediately while the NPC explains the quest over the radio. Put in a menu option to disable all dialogue and cutscenes. Anything! For the love of god! Having fun shouldn't be this hard!
I'll also say that there is *some* decent comedy in the tidal wave of cringe. The "Penn and Teller" segment made me genuinely laugh at first (before they ran that joke into the ground). There have been some other genuinely funny moments, too, so it's not all bad. Just the lion's share of it is bad.
8 bucks is a steal for this game for sure! But it's definitely not perfect..
"some minor QoL issues really exacerbate it and make it way worse than it needed to be." I think this is actually an excellent point that I should have mentioned. In BL2 I did exactly what you're describing, just bomb around town picking up quests quickly. I didn't have much interest in what the random NPC had to say. The way BL3 handled this actually made me stay away from doing a lot of side quests I otherwise probably would have done.
As you put it, I think that besides the dialogue the only other glaringly obvious problem with this game is the UI. The fast travel UI is terrible, we are definitely in agreement on that. And frankly, all of the UI needs an upgrade. While I think it looks pretty nice, the usability of pretty much every menu in the game leaves a ton to be desired. I think gearbox needs to stop iterating on the UI design philosophy they laid out in BL1 almost 15 years ago and take a step into the future. The whole thing should be overhauled for the next BL game.
I also enjoyed some of the comedy the game has to offer, but.. yeah. The majority of it is absolutely unbearable.
Thank you so much for this great comment!
@@gljake yup UI could use some work all-around. I find myself doing a lot of housekeeping in my inventory and the "2-column, large thumbnail" visuals makes it difficult to keep track of stuff. Having more sorting options (damage, fire rate, etc) would help, or a "loot as junk" option when you pick stuff up.
Just a lot of little issues add up to make the UI feel outdated. It's death by a thousand cuts. A lot of the UI could be easily made more efficient and information-dense without compromising the aesthetic.
Kinda frustrating to think about a studio like GB falling short with respect to design basics.
It's not like any of these criticisms are inherent to the core design of the game, either. Although I understand nothing is "easy" with game development, these criticisms could have been addressed very late in development (or fixed in a patch now, even) with very minimal, if not nonexistent, overhaul of existing systems.
What a waste.
I played borderlands 3 as my first borderlands game and went back to play the 2nd one, and I really liked it. Some issues I have from 2 to 3 is that Pandora isnt snowy anymore and the quest markers are the same shape no matter how far from the objective you are.
I really like the way Pandora is represented in Borderlands 2, you get to explore this planet and see how diverse it really is. I wish Borderlands 3 had spent a little more time on Pandora, even if I do really love what they did with all the other environments we get to visit.
@@gljake Dude honestly that's one of my main issues. Dispite its roots, this Borderlands game managed to make Pandora feel incredibly generic in a way that was disturbingly unique. It's like they said "Ok we can't impede on the flavor of the other locations so lets just take the most average parts of the planet and go there so that you know for sure it's Pandora."
That was literally the best explanation of the music in that dlc ever
ahahahaha thank you man. I absolutely hated it!!
I loved Vaughn In tales, they about destroyed his character in this game it makes me angry
He's hella annoying, bro!
I first played bl3 in 2020 on a friend's console. I maybe played a handful of hours total over a few days and I couldn't help but be disappointed at how many legendaries I was getting. In a single session, I was getting so many legendaries in one area that I got the same gun to drop anywhere from 5-10 times. It took away the hype of getting an awesome gun and that was the main impression I was left with.
Fast forward to last year, I grabbed it while it was included in a humble bundle for a ridiculously low price. Before playing it vanilla, I looked up what mods were available online and stumbled upon redux. That experience was so enjoyable, I didn't even remember the bad taste the game left in my mouth a couple years prior.
Wow, I just looked up redux! I'll have to give that a whirl the next time I play this game.. looks awesome. Thanks for the tip!
I picked up BL3 during the Christmas sale not too long ago. I had really good first impressions of the game because I modded out the dialogue for when I was doing the main story quest.
Hahahahahaha this is the right thing to do!
I'm not a big fan of the looting system, where are pearls? Why do legendaries drop so often?
Why is my pp small? Its all BL3s shortcomings
One of my biggest problems about BL3 is how they added dialogue to the playable characters but do nothing with it except make bad jokes. Compare this to TPS which, despite its flaws, actually gave each of its Vault Hunters character arcs. Aurelia went from being this rich snob who only cared about money to someone who is disgusted at what Handsome Jack became, Timothy went from being an actor to fully becoming Jack and hating himself for it and Athena, where do I even start?
The best part is that all of these character arcs fall under the same general theme: money. The writers didn't have to make any big stretches or hero-exclusive missions for these character arcs to work, they naturally fit into the script. BL3 could've done this, but the writers simply didn't and instead made its Vault Hunters glorified yes-men who blow smoke up Lilith and Ava's asses.
The nerfs absolutely killed the game for me. I hated opening the patch notes because it was constantly a wall of things that would no longer be worth using.
The nail in the coffin for me was the nerf of Vampyr Moze. I had a super fun build that I was extremely satisfied with that I didn't look anywhere online to find what was good, then they nerfed it. They didn't even make it weaker, they made it so it just flat out didn't work anymore. I went from having so much fun with the game, more than any previous Borderlands, and they 100% took it away from me. It felt like there was no point in finding a new build or character knowing they could just take it away if I was having too much fun. Going to that after BL2 where they tried to find anything they could do to not nerf Bee/Conference Call was so disappointing.
Excessive nerfing in a game that is all about becoming overpowered is definitely counterintuitive!
Tbh, this game is one of my favorite games of all time
It was just super fun
Me and my brother's played it for 3 years
I understand the story stuff, but if you just love fun, it's really good.
I haven't played Borderlands 3 but what I get from many examples of the game "Borderlands 2 for the story,humour and good characters..."and "Borderlands 3 for satisfying gameplay and graphics"....now thats not really bad at all...since the first thing I'd look for in a game is if it would be immersive and fun to play...a close second would be the story and the details that make it more iconic and honestly Borderlands 2 has got to be one of the most unique first person shooter games out there...never did I think that so many guns,details,secrets,side stories and DIALOGUES could be added in a game...
I absolutely recommend playing this game if you're looking for good gameplay. If you can turn off the part of your brain that cares about narrative and dialogue and just focus on shooting bad guys and getting cool guns, you're not gonna find too many games more fun than this. Borderlands 2 is also excellent, but BL3 is a massive step up in every department besides the story and some looting mechanics.
They wrecked Vaughn tbh. He was great in tales and had a lot of potential and they ruined him
Gearbox needs to hire new writers! Seriously.
ngl bl3 has some great gunplay, and design. but the story is soooo awwwwful compared to previous BL games.
Great review, not one point in the video I would disagree with. Also presented it in a fun and enjoyable way
Replay-ability for me, from my experience. Thousands of hours in 1 and 2 combined and couple play throughs of pre sequel. I love the technical improvements over the older titles music, gunplay, a little better scaling, and better loot system all in bl3. But it just lacks the memorable story moments that don’t still irk me. Mayas underserved death, the annoying twins, the dialogue in general and voice acting in parts. Idk not bad at all though and if bl4 came out I’d probably preorder lol
"An ape playing with windchimes" is SO funny. Thank you.
thank you hahahaha! I couldn't think of any other way to describe it lol.
@@gljake Are you planning on making more content like this? I just found you and was super bummed that I didn't find you like... next year when I can binge a backlog. Planning to watch the Halo Infinite video next!
@@undisabled1552 hahaha thank you so much dude! it means a ton. Yes! I'm aiming for 2 videos a month for now.. maybe more if I can manage it. I'm hoping to have my 3rd video up on Friday if everything goes to plan! Again I really appreciate your feedback, I'm so glad you enjoyed the video!
@@gljake that's rad! Eagerly looking forward to more longform gaming content. Thanks for the videos!
@@undisabled1552 absolutely dude! I've been really enjoying putting these videos together.. even more so because of people like you enjoying them! Thanks a ton and I hope you enjoy the future vids.
Its called "Millennial Writing"
Gearbox should revamp the Pre-Sequel, go through and rework the farmable bosses, assign dedicated drops etc and just clean it up a bit, maybe add more legendaries and rework the Weapon Grinder perhaps.
The Pre-Sequel still has potential!! (The Glitch guns were a good idea) I'd love to run through it again and be able to farm what I want.
I honestly didn’t find borderlands 3 as satisfying as 2 in terms of gun recoil, impact and sound, they just felt less solid and combat was never really that rewarding, didn’t help that borderlands three made really good loot incredibly common, while I don’t like grinding, I definitely feel like they gave you to many options and ones that crushed difficulty easily
They massacred Rhrys. Just betrayed him. Utterly wasted that character.
I find it interesting that so many different content creators have WILDLY different opinions on the DLCs. Some say they're better than the main game, some say they aren't worth it at all, most of them rank Bounty of Blood as the best, but hey, opinions are opinions.
everyone said it was the best, so I played it first! boy, was I disappointed.. lol.
Story wise: yeah it’s kinda hard to live up to borderlands 2, for me it was still enjoyable and had its moments
Gameplay wise: it’s the ultimate borderlands experience, everything just clicks in an awesome way
Really? You think the story was okay? have you... consumed any media in the last 20 years? It's insultingly bad.
the only thing i hated about BL3 was the story telling (ava needs to stfu) and the crazy amount of nerfing they did over buffing things that needed it
The game was ok, the villains were awful and cringey. BL2, I still play to this day.
In my opinion, i really liked the dlc stories. The dlc storylines were so much better than the base game's storyline. Bounty of blood is also my favorite dlc, which i now know is completely opposite of your opinion. Maybe it's just because i main zane and bounty of blood has the lightshow, or because i really love anything cowboy related, but bounty of blood rocks.
I totally agree on the DLC stories! It seems like I'm in the minority on Bounty of Blood, but I will say that if nothing else, I still think it's better storytelling than the base game. Thanks for watching!
Bro I was there since Borderlands 1. Borderlands 2’s story is the best story wise… but Borderlands 3 is the best borderlands game yet. It’s looting, shooting, and gameplay loop is just astonishing
The gameplay really is incredible!
Same thing here. Since day 1. And I think 3 is the best one.
U said it the best
Bounty of Blood added some of the best weapons to the game
That's true, thanks for the input! There were a lot of cool guns, I probably should have taken the time to mention that. I just couldn't stand the story!
I totally agree on the story being blah but the weapons make up for it. For me at least
Fair enough, I'd say!
Dang... Dude did my boy Vaughan dirty. You won't understand him until you play the telltale "Tales from the Borderlands."
hahahaha. I hear great things about that game, but I think it was removed from Steam on the run up to BL3 and I didn't play it due to that. I seriously doubt ANYTHING could redeem the character of Vaughn from BL3 though.
@@gljake nope. It's still on steam. It's $20 but I'd wait for a sale. You can beat it in one sitting if you got nothing to do all day. Vaughan goes from being a paper pushing, desk clutching, people pleasing lil bitch to the leader of bandits. You have a point about the underwear and cape thing. Not sure what's up with that. He also shows up in one of the BL2 dlc and that takes place after the telltale game. Not sure what that was about cause I didn't finish it.
Yeah it's back on steam now which is great, I think it was removed for a bit when telltale went under though. I will play it someday, I would like to at least not completely despise Vaughan hahah
To be completely honest, Borderlands dialogue was always kinda cringe even back in BL1 but i cant help but laugh at how bad it is at times. So the writers still win i guess, just not in the way they intended lol
Watching this video made me want to play Borderlands 3 again, despite the story I had a lot of fun playing on the console, now I've moved to the PC and the game is really, really cheap. I will definitely buy
It's totally worth it! I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself.
Borderlands 3 was (and forever shall be) the WORST borderlands looter/shooter ever! Gearbox under the creepy, amoral shameless - and odd name changing - randy p(r)itchford got extremely lazy and greedy when making B3 and it's DLCs. I do not care about B4. Before B3 the Borderlands universe was wonderful. After B3, it's been a willfully forgettable disaster.
I rather enjoyed BL3, and have spent much more time than others would in this game.
The skill trees are just so awesome in this game, and paired with the fact that you can alter your action skills, it allows for some of the most fun builds I've ever seen in Borderlands. In previous games, a level just felt like extra numbers. A higher chance of this. More of that. Every once in a while you got fun and exciting skills, and even some of the basic ones had enough of an effect to make them fun. But this game was REALLY exceptional, and every level felt meaningful. I would've much rather had a new character or two as opposed to more skill trees, because although the skill trees are kinda cool, they just feel like they play off of the other skill trees as opposed to being their own tree.
The world design was exceptional with a few bad parts in my opinion. Sanctuary III was cool at first, but ended up being very cramped compared to Sanctuary in BL2. Pandora was kinda bland in my opinion. You only got to see the desert part of pandora, and it got boring after a bit. The Axton-Salvador minigame kinda remedied this by being set in the tundra (also, I will fight people on this, but that minigame was honestly SO fun and idc what you say). But I would've loved to see the highlands, or Opportunity, even if it wasn't for a whole lot. Those areas added a lot. I really wish all of Promethea was like Lectra City. Side alleys and roof crawling as opposed to a few highways that you get to drive around. Lectra City felt a THOUSAND times more open as opposed to the rest of Promethea. Eden-6... we don't talk about Eden-6. The rest of the planets, on the other hand? Absolute bangers. Nekrotefayo and the Hammerlock DLC planet are definitely some of my favorite landscapes in gaming. And mf Minos Prime. Absolutely BEAUTIFUL area, with a hint of creepiness. I loved it.
Gameplay wise, it was pretty good. Mayhem 1.0 was dogshit, and I'm glad they changed it, but it wasn't much better. When I first heard about mayhem mode I figured it'd be like "NG+"+. Throw on modifiers like extra health, more shields, etc. But then throw in some crazy stuff. But the mayhem we got was more annoying to play with than it was fun. Eventually you'd spend minutes rerolling modifiers till you got ones you wanted, and it just felt like a chore rather than actual "Mayhem". If BL4 has a mayhem system, gearbox should take a page from Dead Cells' custom mode. Optional modifiers that change the way you approach the game. They also started balancing the guns so much that it felt shitty. You had to grind for a week just to get a good gun to survive mayhem mode with, just for Gearbox to nerf it so you have to grind something else. If gearbox wanted the game to be difficult, they should've implemented UVHM. And the lack of dedicated drops really hurt the game. They eventually added a few, but many drops just couldn't be farmed, and I don't see a reason not to have dedicated drops. Casual players wouldn't notice and grindy players got a reliable way to get gear. And going back to UVHM, why didn't we get a UVHM? I get that BL2 UVHM was abyssmal with the need for slag but... BL3 couldn't fail there because there was no slag. On top of that, Gearbox already had a REALLY good UVHM in The Presequal. I don't understand why they didn't use TPS UVHM instead of BL2 UVHM. It just made no sense to me.
And now we get onto the big one. The story. The biggest problem with the story was that it had no sense of direction. With BL2, there's a clear direction, and it starts with Jack. Jack wants to open the vault, something catastrophic will happen if he does, yada yada. Even without character as charismatic as Jack, you can have a good direction. But Bl3 lacks that. The Bandits want to open the vaults... why? I can't even remember tbh. And mind you, I played BL3 A LOT more than I played BL2, and I can still remember Jack's motive. Tyreen and Troy have no real motivation up until the end, and at that point, most of the game is behind you. It doesn't help that most of the game is a fetch quest. Go here, do this, go here, do this. Not like BL2 is much better, but it actually felt like stuff was being accomplished. Not to mention, there were actual stakes. Most of the stuff Jack did actually set you back or made you do something else. Whenever Troyeen do something its a minor inconvenience. Oh Tannis got captured? We'll just rescue her in the very next quest. Oh they set up defenses? Let's get this mcguffin to bypass them. And the humor was just so bad. I think it gets covered well in this vide, but to add onto it, I feel like the game tries to take itself so seriously. "Oh this is our Endgame" (cause that was back when Endgame was relevant) "We gotta be serious." BL2 was funny, but took itself seriously when necessary. This game is all serious until it's time to crack a joke, then back to serious all of the sudden. On the bright side, the DLCs actually had some half decent humor, and Fustercluck genuinely FELT like BL2 humor.
The characters... god the characters. You can tell that the idea of this game was "Let's set up BL4 with a new cast of characters so we can rope new audiences in." I mean [spoilers dead ahead but if you're this far in the post I assume you don't care] they killed off Maya because of Ava, which can be cool, but Ava never makes that trade worth it. And the kill of Lilith so she can do.... Magic Siren Magic? And then they hint "she's still out there" and I really don't know what's worse, the fact that her "sacrifice" might not mean anything, or that she had to "sacrifice" herself in the first place. Torgue needed more screen time, and as others have said, came off as more of a warmonger than a caring brute like he was in previous games. All the characters from Tales could've been cut with little to no loss, and a lot less confusion for those who didn't play it. Ava. Overall the characters are unfunny, uncool, or uninteresting. At least BL3 took a page from TPS and gave the playable characters unique lines. Moze was definitely my favorite character of the 4 with her witty reactions.
And now... we get... to the absolute monstrosity. That is Tina... My GOD what did they do.
First of all, she's ugly, which I get that they aged her up, that's understandable, but I honestly hate looking at her model. Tbf, it's something the game suffers from a lot: plenty of the characters in BL3 were just kinda grotesque, but Tina was horrible. And Tina's character just didn't click for me like it did in BL2. God even the little cameo in TPS was better in my opinion (obligatory "You will die, oh yeah, you're gonna die, die die die die die).
Overall, I really enjoyed BL3, and I've considered another playthrough of the game, but the story and characters definitely sucked. I feel like the game gets too much bad rep. If you ignore the "3" in the title and just treat it as a standalone game, it's actually pretty good. But after the great story that was 2, it sorta fell flat. That said, I definitely think BL3 is a great game if you can get past the story.
I agree with most of what you said! I feel like bringing in the characters from Tales was a bit of a misstep, especially given how poor the writing is in this game especially compared to Tales. I think they didn't include UVHM because tbh, TVHM seems a little redundant here. The level cap likely should have been increased to facilitate something like that. And my god, the removal of slag is so welcome. Something I definitely meant to mention in the video.
The story being poor here is *almost* forgivable because of how good the gameplay is, the problem is that this is a game that is built to be replayed many times, and I am definitely not interested in sitting through that story more than once without a considerably long break in between.
I think the DLC show that Gearbox learned a bit from the backlash the community gave them, and hopefully this means good things are in store for BL4. Although New Tales has me scratching my head...
Oh yeah, I definitely hope Gearbox does a great job with BL4, although I'll probably end up waiting for the reviews to come in before buying it as opposed to preordering like I did with BL3.
I feel like UVHM could have been worked in. You can reset TVHM, which allows you to get more quest loot, but you can't reset NVHM. I realized that, since I had most my progress on TVHM, I couldn't go back and redo quests for quest items without resetting most of my unlocks (granted, it's not a big deal, but I like a sense of completeness). I feel like UVHM could've bumped the difficulty up for those that wanted a harder experience without mayhem, and leave TVHM for farming quest drops.
bl3 writing was so fucking unbeareable that i basically speedrunned the game in order to be able to play some endgame without cringy af dudes screaming in my ears.
what a shame
BL3 imo seemed rushed and lack luster it was like playing a bad dlc from BL2 which i felt it peaked story and gameplay i use to just crank numbers and enjoyed constant using different guns cause of elemental resistance now im either killing everything or other way around its sad
I really liked Bounty of Blood =3= I liked how it was presented like a stereotypical western with a narrator talking about it like a story about you. I liked the upgrades you’d get that would encourage backtracking to old areas to find secrets, and the set-pieces were wonderful. It feels weird to say that I was looking forward to see how it would play out even though I was pretty sure I already knew how it’d all go down.
Now, this, this is a great review. I miss reviews that actually feel like a person is speaking his mind unfiltered instead of scripted IGN reviews and alike made for UA-cam kids.
I'll be keeping an eye on your channel brother, and good luck with the UA-cam Grind.💯
Thank you so much bro! It means so much to me. I am here for the grind hahaha. The response to this video has been far beyond anything I could have imagined for a first upload! I've got more videos in the works now.
Bogus, 5-minute-long, cookie-cutter game reviews were a major motivation for me to start making videos like this one! I'm hoping to transition into new game reviews at some point, I'm so tired of companies like IGN giving anything but the most dog-ass games a 7 or above! There just aren't enough trust-worthy sources to inform game purchases anymore.
Again I really appreciate the kind words! More content coming soon!
@@gljake With that said, you're gonna be one of my very few favorite reviewers in the upcoming years for sure, I hope I can stick around long enough to remind you of this early stage of the channel and how much worth it it was💯
Don't lose focus on the track, the majority of people underestimate what they can achieve in 5 years and overrate what they can achieve in a month, and they end up destroying their dreams. And Good luck Brother❤🤲🏼
@@amineguts8612 thank you so much bro. I'll remember this! Gotta stay focused, that's for sure. I hope to be around for a long while! And comments like this motivate me to make each video better.. and I really appreciate that man.
Borderlands 3 gameplay, especially end game content, is great. Its level design is great. My main problem is the story, the Calypso Twins I feel would not have gotten away with some of the stuff they did were it not for some key moments. Ava not getting involved, getting Maya Killed and then blaming it on Lilith. The vault hunters being absent in cutscenes that they were clearly present in like when you just kill Troy and presumably your character just sits on the side as they watch Tyreen mop the floor with Ava, Lilith, and Tannis. Anyone remember that moment in borderlands 2 after you kill Angel, Jack comes in, captures lilith and tries to force her to kill the vault hunter in a cutscene being shown in the first person through the vault hunters eyes? It would be better if Gearbox you know did the same thing as Borderlands 2 and had the vault hunter being present in the cutscene even in first person, just to make it feel to the player that their actions have value. That is a small suggestion for how to improve the story beyond you know scrapping 99% of the story.
I don’t think BL3 story and villains are bad, it’s just that we went from Handsome Jack which is one of the best video game villains to Troy & Tyreen which is decent villains but not as good as Jack
1:04. Nope. After playing BL3 there is no way I go back to those badly dated prequels. Gameplay sucks in comparison to BL3 so much that Handsome Jack and the overall story in BL2 or even the worse Prequel-Sequel can not save a dang to make me drop out of BL3 ever again. Only Tiny Tina's Wonderland can work that magic. The gameplay mechanics and engine of BL2 is so outdated and feels less responsive than I had remembered. I tried a couple of times to get back into it, but it was not gonna happen.
Wow this video is more entertaining than bl3 itself
hahahahaha thanks man!!
Tiny Tina's Wonderland actually fixed a lot of problems I had with the story from 3. I found the dialouge more barable and the gunplay as good as 3.
I feel like wonderlands would’ve been perfect if it weren’t for the terrible endgame and the horrible dlc
L take, wonderlands writing is even worse than the F tier writing in BL3
@@ayochill9716 I'm sorry you can't enjoy things :( hope you get better :3
Coming from tales from the borderlands to BL3 was the biggest nose dive in writing quality that I have experienced in gaming, BL3 did have a solid gameplay but it just didn’t bring much new to the table to make up for its terrible writing, I think I would rate it a very solid 7/10 they really need to innovate and hire new writers with BL4 if it’s ever a thing.
saying that Borderlands isn't about the story is just so wrong, Borderlands 2 for example, it is often called a masterpiece because of it's story, it is simply perfectly executed, Handsome Jack is such a masterfully created villain, and the Calypso twins are just... bad... it leaves a bad taste on the franchise...
yeah, sure, Borderlands 3 excels in gameplay, it is undoubtedly incredible, but the story makes it so we have to basically play the game on mute, I miss good story writing, and I think it is as importy, if not more, than gameplay
Bad take saying that the story doesn’t matter. I feel that’s why this game isn’t as good as 2. I mean the handsome jackpot works bc it has a good story. The story is what made 2 so great and the weighting for all the characters. Bl3 seems sooo forced with most of its dialogue
I'm 50/50 on this. In hindsight, I probably should not have been so quick to say that it doesn't matter _at all_ , but my point is basically that I think the story in BL2 is overrated. It's not bad by any means, but people like to consider it as one of the best stories in any game, and people routinely say Handsome Jack is the best video game villain ever. I think both of those opinions are extremely detached from reality, and they make me wonder if these people have ever played a game like RDR2 or The Last of Us.
The story is definitely at least a little important, but it did not detract from my experience all that much because the rest of the gameplay is so good. One thing I didn't put enough consideration into when writing my points on the story is how it's poor quality impacts the game's replayability, and I probably would have docked it a few points there had I thought more about that at the time.
Ava aside, I think Troy getting Maya's powers was a wasted opportunity for a rift in him and his sister's relationship. I wanted to see a real power struggle between the two that would ultimately lead to Troy becoming the true antagonist in the end. I found him slightly less annoying than Tyreen (even funnier), and it would have made for a better twist and better redemption for Maya after his eventual defeat.
Totally agree. The Calypsos basically being eachothers demise would have been a much more interesting story than what we were given.
he still had a fun boss fight
@@bruhgod123 eh
For me the biggest issue was de-militarizing the crimson raiders down to nothing but the original vault hunters even though the crimson raiders were meant to be both vault hunters and ex crimson lance soldiers (which were fairly high in numbers, hence why they were called the CRIMSON raiders). This and cutting out the cutscene that made Ava into a decent character (keeping this cutscene would have fixed her character greatly)
Handsome Jack had such a perfect storm of concept, writing, and acting that it made him one of the best antagonist we've seen in gaming, if not modern media.
Any BL title following it has a near impossible expectation to live up to, and I don't think they will ever match it again. Any villain they set before us will be judged against Jack, and probably be found lacking. That said, yeah the twins were trash anyway. Lol.
I don't really mind if they made the new villains not live up to Jack. But I wish they didn't make them as bad as the Calypso Twins were. They were genuinely just edgy influencers exhibiting fatherless behavior.
I think Borderlands 1 is the best pure Borderlands experience, still to this day. It's the most satisfying
As someone who’s first BL game was BL3, I have a soft spot for it, however, I’m also more of a gameplay person compared to a story person, so I honestly enjoy it a little more than 2, since I don’t pay as much attention to story
Yeah I agree I also thought that in Bl 2 Jack was a bit of an annoying character unironicly because I think some of the story and meaning for things weren’t very apparent especially if I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the story anyways
Very good review. You're really articulate and well spoken. Hope your channel grows and you get the views you deserve
Thank you so much man. The response to this video has been incredible, I never expected it would gain anywhere near this much traction! I can only hope my future videos perform half this well, honestly. Again I really appreciate the compliment!
Another bad thing about BL3 that you didn't mention is the legendary guns. There's a lot of good and fun ones but they're too common. I recently replayed BL2 and found 2 legendary guns after hours of playing. In BL3 my whole inventory is literally just legendary guns.
totally with you on this one. I actually had this in my script for this video originally but I guess something happened and i ended up leaving it out in the final cut. this game should have included pearls at a minimum, but really could have done with rebalancing the entire rarity system because it takes a lot of the hype out of looting when basically everything is orange.
It wasn't like this at launch. I remember constantly looking for upgrades, sometimes even using green weapons. Now, they throw legendarys at you like candy and you can easily use some of them for 10+ levels. They completely subverted their main gameplay loop.
It leads to other issues. You no longer have to worry about ammo. Hectic fights are now trivial. You lose out on all of those narrow escapes you could have had, which to me are half the fun. You don't have to put much thought into skill points, because they really don't matter when you're carrying around that kind of arsenal. Through normal mode I rarely used abilities because they feel useless. At launch, you needed them.
Yea I agree with this. Part of what makes the game easier than previous ones. You've always got some overpowered shit that can rip through enemies. And I literally never once used any Golden Keys or anything.
Best borderlands game to date
The gameplay is incredible, I just wish it had a better story!
Add a manual Dodge key to BL3 (like in darktide) & I would eat IT UP
Gunplay? Incredible. Its very satisfying and responsive.
Weapon variety? Fun but also feels limited at times. I often find myself picking up the same guns with very minor differences or just throwing away guns I've picked up but never touched because a better version is available.
Character classes? Meh. Not as interesting as BL2. Bl2 had some really crazy and fun classes with insane builds. Bl3 not having any DLC chars really sucks and the 4 you get are just..dull.
Story? God awful but shooting is fun so who cares? The story feels generic and rushed, its just another evil corporation trying to find a vault story.
true!