Is Borderlands 2 actually worse than the original? 10 reasons the sequel sucks.

By BatRastered — August 15, 2013
Tags: blog opinion wildrant

Borderlands 2 improved on the original in many areas: story, graphics, depth of skill trees to name a few. But overall it doesn't have that super fun looting hook that the original had. Here's 10 things we hate about the sequel.

10. Follow Randy Pitchford on Twitter if you want gold keys, no way to earn them in-game.

There's a big gold treasure chest in Sanctuary (the main city) that can only be opened with a golden key. It's guaranteed to have purple rarity items in it every time you open it. Quest reward? Nah... just follow Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford's twitter and you'll have more keys than you know what to do with. There's no other way to get them. Kinda lame.

9. DLC that doesn't give you any rewards for your maxed out characters.

In the original Borderlands, the DLC would give you bonus backpack space, additional skill points, and a giant bank. BL2's DLC doesn't give you any of this. Once you hit the max level and have used all your eridum upgrades for ammo/backpack space, there's nothing for your character to get in the DLC save for some unique weapons. Most of those suck too (see point 3).

8. Umpteen currencies

Borderlands 1 had money... the economy was way off though as you'd often be displayed at $9999999 and not be able to see how much money you actually had. Many guns showed this price too. Instead of just fixing this in the sequel Gearbox added Eridium as a secondary currency to buy ammo and backpack upgrades. Then, in the DLC, they introduced Seraph Crystals and Torgue Tokens. This plus the golden keys, gave us 5 numbers to track that only worked in certain areas.

7. Anemic backpack space

Before DLC, the original BL maxed out at 42 backpack slots. BL2 maxed out at 27. Wait, what? The bank introduced in Borderlands' second DLC (Moxxi) also stored up to 42 items while the BL2 bank (included in the main game) only stored 16, it has since been upped to 20, while the backpack has gone to 33. Meanwhile, in the original, you could get up to a 60 item backpack if you got all the DLC and lucked out in some of the second quests.

6. Ammo collection mini-game

Do you like opening ammo crates and picking up ammo? Well if you do, you'll love BL2. Due to many guns firing more than one bullet per trigger pull, lowered ammo capacities, and the lack of guns/mods that regen ammo, you'll be scrounging for ammo constantly. God help you if you use a rocket launcher. In a game about guns, I don't know why Gearbox felt it necessary to make the ammo feel so limited.

5. Slag

Borderlands 2 introduced Slag, a debuff element that makes enemies take more damage when you switch to another element type. It's pretty useless in normal mode, but kinda useful in the second playthrough. In the later released 3rd playthrough (UVHM) slag is absolutely necessary. You can't win without it as you'll just burn through all your ammo trying to kill anything that's not slagged. This reduces the types of play styles that you can use and obviously requires you dedicate some of your gear to slag. Bye bye diversity... everyone's the same now.

4. Rabid stalkers

Have you fought these? Ugh... the move faster than you, can down you in two hits, can turn invisible and strike out of nowhere, have a ton of health and don't get distracted by anything. Most annoying ememy in both games and DLC. Runner up is the Rabid skags. They seem completely unbalanced and fighting multiple badasses is easier than dealing with one of these baddies.

3. Terrible guns

For a game about having bazillion-er guns there certainly don't seem to be that many. In fact, it feels like there's less than the first game. If you only count guns that are actually useful, then the number drops even further, eliminating whole manufacturerers of guns. With one or two exceptions (dat kerblaster!) the orange guns in BL2 don't seem as fun to me as the original either. I miss my Maliwan shotties!

2. Orange weapons useless 2 levels later (gets worse the higher the level)

I feel more powerful at level 69 in the original Borderlands while carrying a level 53 gun, than I do at (current max) level 61 in BL2 carrying a level 60 orange weapon. Every level you go higher, the difference one level makes gets bigger too. You need at level gear at all times, and to get some good ones you'll use a golden key that you can only get out of game on twitter.

1. No rewards (drops are awful, chests are worse, vendors LOL)

In Borderlands, a bandit would be shooting you with an epic weapon and upon his death he would drop that weapon. That doesn't happen in BL2, they just drop shit. The chests are full of shit, and the vendors are just laughably filled with white shit. You can play for hours and hours and never see an orange weapon. You probably won't even get an at-level purple unless you have a golden key either. It just feels like you don't get rewarded for playing this game the way you did in the first Borderlands. The only thing that drops anything good are the legendary loot midgets that randomly pop out of ammo crates in the third playthrough (UVHM) and they most often will drop a relic.

Borderlands 2

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Release Date: Sep 18, 2012

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Is Borderlands 2 actually worse than the original? 10 reasons the sequel sucks.

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