Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! Review

The newest entry into to Borderlands series is Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! which isn't a sequel to Borderlands 2 but a prequel to it but also a sequel to the original Borderlands, basically making it somewhat of a strange entry placed in between the two.

If you've played both Borderlands 1 and 2 then you're wondering why you should get the Pre-Sequel!? Well dependent on how much you love the franchise will definitely sway you to buy the game but if you're not into the series as much and still on the fence about the purchase then I'll go on to explain why you shouldn't buy the game.

The story of The Pre-Sequel! follows the story of four new Vault Hunters; Athena, Wilhelm, Nisha and Claptrap. With the introduction of new playable characters comes new skills and I was disappointed to find out that the Siren class wouldn't be returning as they had some of the most useful and unique abilities in the game.

The skills of each character are:

Athena

Athena: "It allows her to raise her Aspis shield for a short time, and use it to absorb incoming damage. Once charged, the Aspis can then be thrown at targets to release its pent up energy in a devastating attack." (Taken from borderlands.wikia.com)

Wilhelm

Wilhelm: "Activation of this skill will deploy Wolf, a floating red attacking robot, and Saint, a white supporting robot. The robots can be recalled, and both of them can receive various upgrades from skills." (Taken from borderlands.wikia.com)

Nisha

Nisha: "Automatically aim at enemies while drastically increasing Gun Damage, Fire Rate, Reload Speed, Accuracy, and Bullet Speed." (Taken from borderlands.wikia.com)

Claptrap

Claptrap: "Upon activation, VaultHunter.EXE will analyse the situation, and will bestow a "Action Package" depending on the criteria met. The effects of some Action Packages may extend to nearby allies. More outcomes can be made available by investing in certain skills in the skill tree." (Taken from borderlands.wikia.com)

The first disappointing element of The Pre-Sequel!'s story was that unless your characters were Claptrap or Athena, your character wouldn't play much of a big role in the overall story. Especially Nisha. Compared to past Borderlands games, The Pre-Sequel! has by far the worst put together story. Borderlands 2 originally felt like much of a fetch quest storyline but at least it had surprises a lot more unique encounters in it.

<<Spoiler Free>>

The storyline of The Pre-Sequel! focuses on Jack, the main antagonist of Borderlands 2. The Pre-Sequel! exists to explain the reason of why Jack became known as Handsome Jack and why he is the bad guy in Borderlands 2. The development of Jack becoming the bad guy started off good but as the story went on it became somewhat rushed to reach an ending with the final encounters in the game having no backstory as to why such things exist. The Pre-Sequel! does explain the lore of the world a bit better than Borderlands 1 or 2 but that's only because both those games existed that helped shape this story. I found most of my time not caring about the story at all similar to Borderlands 1 and 2. The story is uninteresting in the way they present it. You are given free reign to go and kill whatever you want while the NPCs blabber on and on.

You would think that at least Gearbox would bring in a bigger cast of new characters but instead they just recycle the older characters from Borderlands 1. It just seems as if Gearbox can't get rid of the greatness of Borderlands 1 by continually reusing aspects of the original game and the sequel game.

World map

Instead of exploring Pandora this time round, you explore the Moon's surface along with, eventually, the Hyperion space station. The world isn't as big as Borderlands 2 and the teleport booths are spread out thinly across large expanses of map forcing you to walk a distance before you can get a vehicle or teleport. The Moon's is inhabited by humans who, the majority of, speak in an Australian accent. Now, as an Australian myself, I thought it was pretty unique that they would make most of the NPCs in this game have a different accent to those of Pandora but how wrong I was. The worst thing about having the accent constantly in your ear is that it's the typical stereotyped accent of Australia. You hear most NPCs speaking like idiots and you rarely find a single intelligible NPC in the game. The world was just annoying the moment I stepped on it.

Concordia is the main hub similar to Sacntuary from Borderlands 2.

You still get the experience of doing a lot of side quests to level up and unlock different weapons or even skins or heads to customize your character. But all this feels extremely repetitive if you've already played the other Borderlands games. Most of the side quests in this game, similar to the quests in the older games, are just time fillers for leveling between main quests or stronger regions. They provide little to no significance to the rest of the story other than a tiny little tidbit of information into the location of which most of the time you don't even care what the NPC has to say. The main story took around 10-11 hours to complete, only doing a few side missions along the way. In general it felt a lot shorter than what Borderlands 1 or 2 had to offer in terms of story length. Because it's a prequel to Borderlands 2, you can easily gauge the length of the story by Jack's progression.

The gameplay is just a copy of what Borderlands 2 had, even the issues from graphic issues to menu problems and gunplay to the continual dying you'll have throughout your game time. The fact that Gearbox just copy and pasted Borderlands 2 over into this game is saddening considering they didn't even fix many of the issues that existed in Borderlands 2.

Weapon menu

The game features different king of enemies ranging from robots to crazed humans to animals on the Moon's surface. You'll find yourself comparing most of the enemies to Borderlands 2 enemies due to the similarities they have such as the human enemies Scavs to Bandits, Kraggons which are just Scags infused with the Moon's surface. There are different factions of humans in the game increasing the diversity in terms of name but not in terms of AI. There are Scavengers, to Scavs, Raiders and Lunatics to name the main ones.

The gunplay in general is solid with the addition of a new type of weapon which is the laser rifle. All the gun types from the original game still exist such as pistols, snipers, rifles, smg and rocket launchers. The guns in the game are identified mainly by their brand which are still the same as Borderlands 2 with the addition of a new brand Scav (which I don't know the benefits of). Most brands have their own unique effect that can help you choose which type of gun you would mainly use. For example, Hyperion guns are more accurate the longer you fire, Maliwan guns are good at dealing elemental damage but suffer less overall gun damage.

You'll find yourself dying over and over again as it seems to be a recurring factor of the Borderlands experience. If Gearbox could do a better job of balancing enemies to not have so many deaths involved in general combat would be great. The fact that you die a lot annoys the player more than it makes you think that you need to perform better as there are a lot things that one shot your shield then one shot you're character.

You still get the basic menu of 4 weapons that you can use. (You only start with 2 but you get more as you level up). Along with a shield slot that provides a shield that absorbs damage and sometimes has special effects that occur when depleted. A class item that provides bonuses specifically to your class. A grenade mod that determines what your grenade does, whether it's just a thrown grenade or a sticky or if it is a continual area effect or it may be a cluster grenade etc.). An oxygen kit slot that houses an item that determines how much oxygen you have and has a ability that determines how much damage your 'butt-slam' ability does which is an ability that occurs when you jump and slam down to the ground from a height.

The movement was changed to accompany the fact that you're in a zero atmosphere environment meaning that your jumps last longer and you need to breathe using this oxygen system in the game. I played Claptrap and as a robot you don't need oxygen to breathe which was one of the reasons Claptrap was the better character to choose of the four. You can also use your oxygen supple as a sort of movement booster that would help you glide as you jumped.

Skill tree

The skills of the game are still the same as Borderlands 2 in the way that you are only allowed 1 active skill which gets additional bonuses as you level up your character. Veterans of the series will be familiar with the skill tree system that exists in The Pre-Sequel!. You are given three trees of which all have unique abilities suited for a specific style of gameplay. You can't max every skill in the skill tree but you can get close to maxing two I believe as I don't know the current max level. I honestly wanted the game to have more than 1 active skill to make it more diverse and fun but alas there is still only 1 skill.

The Pre-Sequel! still has that unique cell shaded, bordered outlines design that made it so popular when it was first shown off in Borderlands. I will say that I do somewhat enjoy the art style of the game because IT IS really unique but having played both Borderlands and Borderlands 2 you can obviously see the reused models with just differently coloured textures.

I can't help but make comparisons to Borderlands 2 because The Pre-Sequel! is basically the same game with a different story and landscape. The Pre-Sequel! is definitely not worth the full price it is asking for as it's more of a full priced expansion than a unique title in the series. The Pre-Sequel! is really a disappointment of a game from Gearbox and 2K Australia. I'm hoping that the reason two studios made this game is because most of the work force from Gearbox are actually developing a proper sequel to the Borderlands franchise.

Basically, if it's your first Borderlands game you might as well buy Borderlands 2 because that gives you a more fulfilling experience even without all the DLC. You should only buy this game if you're a really really big fan of the Borderlands franchise. If not and you have played the previous games, you should skip this one and wait for the next one.

6/10 - Doesn't make any step forwards in anything. It's more of a reskin than a full game release and paying $80-100 AUD for this game is criminal. Unless you're a die hard Borderlands fan, there is nothing of interest in this game. Skip it.