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As someone who absolutely loves Borderlands games and the universe they are set in, I have been aching to play this game for so long but just couldn’t get it along with all of the DLC’s at an acceptable price until recently when one user on Steamgifts made a thread about Handsome Collection bundle on steam receiving a nice discount. It was an instant purchase for me, got the PreSequel, all of its DLC’s and all of the DLC’s I’ve been missing for Borderlands 2 (Headhunter and cosmetic ones).

After beating it twice (with Athena and Jack) on normal mode, including the DLC content, I have to say this game is kinda underrated. With so many people saying it’s nowhere near as good as the second game I went in without high expectations, but I ended up loving it and perhaps enjoying it more than the second game.

This game added good deal of new things and improved over some. You can jump-boost for faster movement through the map and you can slam attack from air which deals AoE damage (which can be elemental) by using oxygen kits. There is an awesome new hover vehicle; the Stingray with which you can move and jump over all sorts of terrain. There is a new weapon group, the laser guns and they come in several forms: the railguns (laser snipers), beam, blaster (laser machineguns) and splitters (laser shotguns). There is now a cyro element which can freeze enemies and makes them take 200% more melee/explosive/critical damage while frozen. The game overall felt more balanced in nearly every way.

Characters you play with now talk as you play (unlike characters in previous games which would only say certain catchphrases every now and then), they also comment on things happening in the story and some side quests giving them personality and making them more interesting and enjoyable to play with. I also find this to be the most interesting cast of playable characters yet, with better and more interesting skill trees.

Another thing I liked and appreciate are better loot drops in singleplayer compared to previous game. In Borderlands 2 I would need to farm bosses for hours to get some good stuff, in PreSequel I’d get legendaries or good blue/purple guns relatively often from bosses and chests.

Being a sequel to the first game and a prequel to the second, you get to find out all sorts of things through main and side quests that are related to the other two games and I loved that. For example you find out how loader bots were made and why are they yellow. You also find out how Jack came to the idea of shooting them with the moonshot cannon to the planet. Why claptrap dubsteps. How was Jack before and how and why he changed. And many more things.

The game is not without flaws though. The oxygen system can be a bit annoying at times and also makes exploring less fun. Some quests require you to listen through dialogue before being able to proceed, which isn’t really an issue in the first playthrough, but is kinda annoying on subsequent ones. Side quests were a bit less interesting and fun than those in the second game and their pacing through level gaps in the same area is a bit bad at times.

Anyway, it’s a fantastic game and I think it deserves more praise than it gets. I planned on beating it with at least two more characters (Claptrap and Nisha) and perhaps going through TVHM and UVHM with some of them, but ended up giving up from that for now to continue working on my backlog.

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I won Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition on Steamgifts today, which is a game so many people praise and consider a masterpiece. Then I found out that CrossCode, an awesome indie 2D Action RPG which I own and have been waiting since 2015 to get finished is finally out of early access. I downloaded both of them and I can’t decide which one to play first, I’m sure both are great games, but they’re also both lengthy. I’m kinda leaning towards CrossCode though, I think I will enjoy that more.