Borderlands: The Pre Sequel review

So we return to the mad Gearbox world of Borderlands. Borderlands has grown as a franchise and the last game really built on the foundation the first game had set as precedent. Those that played the previous games know what I'm talking about; the environments, the classes, progression, loot and of course, the DLC.

Borderlands has always been a game best played cooperatively and shines when you have a full compliment of players wielding the four different classes available. In the Pre Sequel we see four new classes, most notable of all is ClapTrap (CL4P TR4P variations), playable for the first time. His skill tree and progression is based on all the other classes, old and new, and his skill attack varies depending on who's on your team, how many of you there are and what the enemy type is. A lot of the skill attacks are shared too, so if you activate the 'Gunzerker' skill, it'll apply to all on your team. There are few skill moves that don't work for the whole party, but on the whole they all apply in some form or another.

But that’s just ClapTrap. Athena, Nisha and Wilhelm also feature too, their skills. Athena is a Gladiator, her skill reflects that and she has a shield she wields that absorbs enemies energy and uses it to launch them across the map. Nisha is the Lawbringer and affords you with a mighty whip that can take out multiple enemies simultaneously. Wilhelm, you may remember from BL2, is the Enforcer. He’s able to fire out drones to eliminate enemies. Spending your skill points is just as agonising as each of the three progression branches are all worth exploring and boost your skill accordingly.

Your loadouts too can alter your power, as in the previous games. Relics have been replaced with Oz (or O2) kits, a nod to 2K Australia who have embarked on taking on this mighty franchise. The Oz kits help you around the new environment, the Moon, and allow you to carry more Oxygen as you explore the oxygen deficient environment. Not for breathing though if you’re playing as Claptrap, it’s more for your jump where there’s very little gravity. Human players will need it for breathing, but dropped enemies always drop Oz canisters for you to pick up and the Moon is dotted with Oz geysers from which you can top up. Oz also allows you to utilise the ground pound, a powerful downward slam that can really help when you’re surrounded. In addition they can deal elemental damage, which can be very helpful in close combat situations.

Combat is pretty much the same old fair, there are always enemies to kill helping you grind up your XP for those all important skill points. You’ll meet a variety of enemies, but it does all feel as if they’re the same enemies from the previous game re-skinned. Nonetheless it’s good fun just getting involved in fire fights and seeing what loot is dropped. You see, loot promised to play a more dominant role in your game with the addition of the Grinder in Concordia, the player hub city of the game. As if billions of weapons wasn’t enough, the Grinder promises to take three items of the same quality and drink them to “create high quality items” with a “chance to give Luneshine”. More often than not three items wouldn’t grind. After exhaustive trail and error, there seemed to be no real formula to what would and wouldn’t grind. And when you did finally get a combination that worked, the weapons were more often than not no better than what you’d put in - despite it being a rarer grade.

Unfortunately this is a thread through the Pre Sequel. Things that 2K Australia have tried to do to enhance haven’t failed, they’ve just not really progressed the game further. It’s pretty samey, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t feel like it offers or even matches Borderlands 2. In places it feels restrictive and a lot smaller than Borderlands 2.

There is only one new vehicle too. A Stingray which is some single-seated, rotor hovering contraption that elevates on a vertical axis as opposed to boosting. It’s good fun, you can boost up and slam down using the left and right bumpers respectively. You can traverse canyons if you get the boost right. But that’s about it. It’s a real shame there was no flying vehicle, something I had expected to see.

But it still doesn’t fail you. It’s got a great story if you’ve followed the previous games and the campaign alone is a generous 15 play through. That’s not including all the side missions which you can expect to at least double that, if not triple the time you sink into the game.  In addition, Moxxi is still around, and we get to see Lilith, Roland and Mordecai again.

But for those of you that love your loot, you’ll notice a lack of rare items. In the whole play through we only found two legendary items and hardly any purple loot. What loot was rare was always of a lower level than our characters and therefore were useless. Despite our disappointment we believed that grinding the weapons in the aforementioned Grinder would solve all our loot worries. As you know, this didn’t happen, so all in all a little bit of a fail. But not a complete failure because the weapons that you do find and that are the right level for you are sufficient enough to deal damage to keep things balanced. And the balance is just right. It might be that the rarer items really are more powerful and genuinely harder to come by. Here’s to hoping. But you expect some decent loot drops after epic battles, and there just isn’t enough. Or rather, there’s a lot less than expected.

Despite all of this, however, The Pre Sequel is still, at it’s core, a great FPS-RPG. It delivers. And playing through on Handsome Jack’s side, filling you in with all his story is great for the Borderlands fan. You finally find out why and how Handsome Jack is the way he is. You’ll also find that you’ve sunk a lot more time into it than you expected to, like the previous games. It’s always rewarding you, even though the rewards might be a little lacklustre sometimes.

All in all though it’s still a solid, fun and funny game. I still maintain it’s best to play with friends, ideally three others, but there’s enough there if you want to go it alone. Remember though, the loot gets better and harder with more friends. But then again, you do have to fight over it!