yet another borderlands 3 post

its meh. 6/10 at most. it was kinda fun but around halfway to two-thirds of the way through the game just became a slog. i stopped taking side quests and just focused on the main story. when i finished bl2 a few years back, i immediately went into tvhm and set out to 100% the game. when i finished bl3, i looked at the skill trees of the other characters, and am now probably going to uninstall.

the skill trees are boring. theres a lot of options but theyre all just stat increases and free ammo and better handling. certainly less interesting than bl2's, where each point feels like a unique perk, and the last skill on the tree was an achievement. contrast that with bl3's, where its +25% damage. now because there are so many skills, and you can mix and match, theres a lot more room for builds. i ended up going with a forever critical build on fl4k's green and red trees, trying to maximize fadeaway time and critical damage. i also liked the augments and the action skills that you can swap out. that said, i think the higher number of skills, instead of enriching the gameplay with more choices, just diluted the impact of each individual skill point because theyre just going to incremental stat increases.

its also weird that three of the four characters have a 'pet/companion ai' skill. zayn has his clone that he can teleport to. fl4k has his pets. moze has her iron bear. whats the point of making a lot of skills if the characters just get similar kinda samey skills as a result? going down the red tree, the spiderant can be kinda annoying at times, distracting your shots with the bright particle effects or just body blocking your sight directly when trying to pick stuff up/etc.

the rarity in this game is fucked. there are so many legendaries, and they are so powerful that every other rarity just becomes fodder for marcus. the game is so easy youre never forced to use green guns that are higher level than your orange guns. the only time i ever had any trouble was with the anointed goliath fight, because my half-baked build focused on snipers and the boss was a teleporting goliath, which is hard to snipe. i just breezed through the rest of the game not even bothering to snipe anymore, even though my skills favored long distance shots and actively penalized getting up close and personal. my level 30 legendary shotgun was usable up to the ending where you're leveled to 40.

the vehicle sections felt shoehorned in and unnecessary. bl2 races was good because they were (mostly) optional and challenging. in bl3, a lot of them are required, and easy as hell, its not even fun just hold forward. the penn and teller bit was kinda fun but only because hearing penn on the background was kinda funny. the vehicle part of that level was just boring, being expected to use the slow truck. just not for me

now for the good parts. the enemy variety was strong, and even though ultimately the response was just 'shoot them in the head' or 'grenade enforcers and goliaths', it was fun. the gunplay is great. shotguns feel amazing, the chonky one by one reload of snipers was cool. your first ar felt great because youve only been using white pistols up to that point. the maps were varied.

typhon's voice is annoying, i think intentionally, but still annoying. my completionist instinct urged me to get every log anyways. when you had to physically spend time with him it was even more grating.

now the usual suspects. we know the story is bad. i dont have to rehash that again. its never been the series strong point, but at least back then there were colorful and endearing characters that you cared about. now neither the good guys or the bad guys were.

my take on the humor in bl3 is that it isnt significantly worse than in bl2. its the same kind of humor, but released now as opposed to ten years ago. maybe your sense of humor moved on, maybe the world's humor moved on. its not any less or more funny, its the same level of funny.

the streamer references were cringier than most streamer references in games, but only because more screentime was dedicated to the antagonists, who are streamers. not because they misunderstood streamers more than other devs.

the only thing making this entire ordeal worthwhile was nostalgia for bl2 and the admittedly great gunplay. but people say that this level of gunplay and things like climbing ledges and slides are industry standards nowadays. i dont play a lot of fps, so if anyone can drop some recommendations on games with similarly great mechanics i would really appreciate it. thanks for reading :)