Borderlands

The first Borderlands game is the first in a series that many love. And it’s no wonder why it is so, it’s a great game with great mechanics that still mostly holds up well to this day, especially with the game of the year enhanced edition.

I first got the game 3 years ago, but I had gotten a bunch of other games along with it on sale so I didn’t get to play it much, even more so as I’d gotten stuck in the early game at the time. So I ended up putting the game off for a long time, and finally got back to it when I got my PS5. For the longest time I thought, maybe looter shooters just aren’t for me, maybe they aren’t but Borderlands should’ve been a game I loved. I’m a sucker for RPGs and numbers games in general so there must’ve been something I was doing wrong, right?

Well cut to one day, or night, I was watching YouTube and came across a Borderlands video: This EXTREMELY RARE Drop Just Made Gaming History!. It’s a great video and you should watch it, but in the video Joltzdude139 talks a bit about how the loot system in Borderlands 1 works, and it was what got me sold on the game… after I’d bought it.

So I start playing again, and I get hooked, line and sinker or whatever. From the game’s (poorly aged but still funny-ish) dialogue and humor to the honestly decently challenging combat and even the janky-ness of it all had a certain appeal to it. Skip forward about 20 hours later and I’m starting play-through number 2 in order to get the platinum.

At this point I’m missing only a few trophies, mainly just a few co-op ones which don’t take long to do and one big one, that requires you to reach level 50—the original level cap.

I go into the DLCs for a few extra levels as I’d gotten stuck in the early game again, and I’m greeted by that charm the game has all over again. It’s not necessarily funny but it does manage to get a few laughs from me here and there and it’s genuinely a great game with (for the time) great dialogue.

The one thing I will say is that before after play-through 1 and before play-through 2 (not play-through 1.5) the game is pretty boring solo. And I did play it solo because I have no friends :D. Play-through 1.5 is more so a level grinding play-through where you just go through the game again to get to level 50 and reach the real play-through 2 where all the good weapons start spawning and enemies get way higher scaling.