What is... Borderlands 2

 

Picture taken from wallpapercave.com

Introduction

Despite the hype of the Borderlands 3 release, how about we take two steps behind and have a look on the game before the inception of this new released game? Let’s recall on how amazing Borderlands 2 is. Released back in September 2012, Borderlands 2 is a critically acclaimed first-person-shooter action role playing game with the element of shoot and loot in it. The game is developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games, available on the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, the PS4 and Xbox One version was released in March 2015 titled Borderlands: The Handsome Collection as part of the remastered edition of both Borderlands 2 and Borderlands the Pre-Sequel (The game after Borderlands 2 serves as both prequel and sequel, hence the name The Pre-Sequel, and was released back in 2014). However, the game that we are going to focus now is, of course, the second installment of the Borderlands series, Borderlands 2. The story takes place after the event of Borderlands 1, it tells the story of how new group of mercenaries called The Vault Hunters, are going to stop Handsome Jack from opening the Vault, a cache containing ancient alien technology, that is in planet Pandora.  

Borderlands is the type of game that lets you pick characters, instead of creating new ones, and lets you tweak the skills to suit your playstyle depending on the character that you are playing. RPG is always something that I love in video games, and I think Borderlands 2 was one of the best FPS RPG games that I ever played. The story of the game is not entirely hard to follow even if you have yet to play the first game. I for one started playing this game before even playing the first one, it was not hard for me to follow. One thing that Borderlands 2 never run out is content, and the other thing is gun, seriously, this game has millions of it, but I digress. The gameplay elements that Borderlands provides mostly revolve on the open world roaming, quests taking, character skill building and the hunt for legendary loots, all elements are ruled by one key element, which is freedom. Players are allowed freely to complete the main whenever they feel like to, and to roam to whichever area their curious mind proposes. Allow me to explain the gameplay by breaking down into its characters, weapons, and missions and objectives.

Characters

Borderlands 2 starts off with four original characters, Axton the Commander, Maya the Siren, Salvador the Gunzerker (yes, a berserker with a gun, therefore “gunzerker”, pretty cool title), and lastly Zer0 the well, uh, the Number. Axton is similar to your old school soldier that you can find in any other shooter games, he may look typical on the surface, wait till you play him and see how badass he can be. Maya is a Siren who owns a supernatural power that emphasizes on crowd control. Salvador is your reason why you should learn from him if you want to fully utilize your testosterone. Zer0 is the mysterious robotic ninja that talks in Haiku, he’s my personal favorite. Additional two characters are Gaige, and Krieg, both of which released in 2012 and 2013 respectively as part of the DLC (downloadable content).  Gaige is a Mechromancer, she summons a robot called Deathtrap to fight alongside with her. Krieg is basically a psycho, he just wants to kill everything on his way, but he’s a good psycho, paradoxical? I know, welcome to Borderlands.

Each character has unique active/action skill that makes them different and stand out from other characters, at the same time, each character has passive skills that they can upgrade in the skill tree to augment or to modify their active skill. Each character has three categories for their basic skill on the skill tree, each category brings different outcome for the character as we invest skill points on it. So, let’s dive into each character’s unique abilities and play style, shall we? 

Axton

Axton, the Commander

Axton's skill tree.

First, we start with Axton, the commander. Axton’s play style relies heavily on the sentry turret that he can summon to aid him in every gunfight that occurs. The sentry gun will attack all hostile enemies and can make a good distraction when you have to make an emergency reload or to create extra firepower in the battlefield. Upgrading Axton’s skill may allow him to throw two sentry guns on the battlefield, creating shield around the sentry gun to protect him and other players, making the sentry gun attachable on any surface, not just the ground, for better firing spot, and can even create a mini nuke explosion that causes serious area damage to enemies. Axton’s skill trees categories are Guerilla, Gunpowder, and Survival. The first one focuses on the better turret utilities, the second one focuses on upgrading the firepower for both Axton and his turret, and the last one focuses on a more defensive combat style where it allows Axton to take on more damage. 

The sabre turret is a very effective tool to assist you in combat.

Maya

 

Maya, the Siren

Maya's skill tree

Next up, Maya. Maya is a Siren who can create a telekinesis-like power called “phaselock” that suspend an enemy on the air for her to finish up. Her playstyle is focused toward the ability to control the battlefield better when swarmed by enemies. Depending on which skills you invest, Maya’s phaselock can create a very powerful elemental damage, can cast a mind control spell, can heal herself and can make her the healer. Her skill trees are divided into Motion, Harmony, and Cataclysm. The first one is the crowd control skill that allows her to ricochet her bullets as she shoots on a phaselocked enemy and of course there’s more than just ricocheted bullets, the second one is what makes Maya the healer of this game, you can save your friends from a far distance simply by phaselocking on them when they are in a state of “Fight For Your Life”. Lastly, Cataclysm is the real deal for Maya, do you like seeing people burn? Melting? Electrified? Then invest your skill points in this tree.

A well invested Phaselock can bring a devastating elemental damage.

Salvador

Salvador, the Gunzerker

Salvador's skill tree.

Salvador is the kind of guy who just charges towards the battlefield while shooting at almost everyone who stands in his way. If you like this kind of playstyle then I suppose this amigo is your best choice. His skill, “Gunzerking” allows him to wield two weapons at the same time. You can mix and match any two weapons from your arsenal. Double handgun? Go for it, cowboy. Double Shotgun? Pump it up. Double Assault Rifle? Put a shame on Axton’s face. Tired of using the same type of weapon? Well, combine a handgun and a shotgun maybe, or a submachinegun and a sniper, weird combination, but meh, if it does a lot of damage it is still good to go. Or you just feel like going boom boom and just run in the middle of the battlefield while wielding two rocket launchers? By all means, just do it. That is how badass Salvador can be. His skill trees are divided into Gun Lust, Rampage, and Brawn. The first one improves his gun damage and weapons utility such as increased weapon swapping speed, better reload speed, fire rate and so on. Rampage is all about upgrading your Gunzerking skill, to the point that you can even Gunzerk again right after your skill duration is up, that is because the cooldown reduction this skill tree provides. So yeah, unlimited skill use, pendejo. Lastly, Brawn is the survival skill for Salvador, since he is the type to jump right in the middle of the crossfire, this skill allows him to soak up tons of damage by regenerating health point as the lower his health gets.

Salvador's dual wielding ability allows him to deliver a barrage of bullets.

Zer0

Zer0, the Number

Zer0's skill tree.

Moving on, let’s talk about this tall, slender, mysterious looking ninja. Zer0. He has everything I like in my video game fantasy, cool headed, calm, mysterious, sword-wielding, assassin-type character. The first time I played this game I picked him as my choice. Zer0 specializes in two extreme ranges, the long-range, and the melee-range. Meaning he is an expert in both sniping enemy from afar or executing enemies upfront with his sword. His skill is called, Decepti0n. Okay okay, before we move on, every O that is used to describe Zer0 is written in leet. In other words, the vowel O is replaced with the numeric 0. So, as I was saying, his skill Decepti0n allows him to create a holographic image of him to deceive enemies while Zer0 himself enters a cloaking mode that renders him invisible for 5 seconds. During this state, Zer0’s damage is significantly increased. The longer you hold it before firing the first gunshot or executing a melee strike, the higher the damage. However, timing is fairly important, if you hold your strike for too long you’re gonna end up becoming visible again as your 5 seconds is finished. Yet, it is not entirely a waste, because the invisibility will come in handy as your escape mechanism. Zer0’s skills are divided into Sniping, Cunning, and Bloodshed. Sniping is pretty straightforward, it focuses on Zer0’s sniping skill and increases his critical damage. Cunning is an all rounded ranged and melee damage and better utility for Zer0’s ability such as the cooldown reduction. Bloodshed is my favorite, it allows you to execute enemies with ridiculous amount of damage through melee attack. It makes you feel like a true ninja. :D

Zer0 fights his enemy cunningly by deploying a distracting hologram offensively or defensively.

Gaige

Gaige, the Mechromancer

Gaige's skill tree.

Gaige is a kid, she is a kid with a deadly robot. If you like cute kids, she’s your best choice. Wait, that sounds wrong. If you wish to play Axton but tired of his immobile turret, then Gaige is your best choice. Ah, that sounds better. Gaige’s skill allows her to summon Deathtrap, a robot that will aid her in battle, somewhat similar to Axton’s skill, except Deathtrap can move around even pass through walls, seriously, either this is a glitch or one of Deathtrap’s unique ability. Whatever it is, I’ll leave you to decide. Gaige’s skills are divided into Best Friend Forever, Little Big Trouble, and Ordered Chaos. The first tree allows her to share defensive skills with her robot Deathtrap, the second tree allows her to deliver better elemental damage, mostly shock damage. The third skill tree, Ordered Chaos, focuses mostly on Gaige’s firepower, primarily caused by her skill Anarchy. This skill allows her to stack up damage as she kills enemy or empty her magazine without reloading, the damage will stack up so high at the expense of gun accuracy. Gaige can be so easy and so complex to play depending on which skill you invest for her. Ordered Chaos skill tree indeed is a confusing skill for rookie players as the Anarchy skill in it prompts a more technical gameplay and proper choice of your arsenal.

Deathtrap's ability to pass through wall is either a glitch or a feature.

Krieg

Krieg, the Psycho

Krieg's skill tree.

Finally, the last playable character is Krieg. Krieg is similar to Salvador, he would jump right in the battlefield and kill all enemies, except Krieg focuses more on melee range. He can be described as high reward/high risk gameplay in this game. Krieg’s skills mostly involve self-harm and taking up damage to activate other skills that grant him more damage. His basic skill Buzz Axe Rampage will render him on a melee rampage, increasing his movement speed as he goes on slaughtering enemies at close range. His skill trees are Bloodlust, Mania, and Hellborn. Bloodlust focuses on his ranged-weapon damage, Mania focuses on augmenting his basic action skill and can make him to become a terrifying killer, while Hellborn is the most complex skill of his, it involves self-immolation, aye, burn yourself boy. Hellborn focuses on Krieg’s elemental damage, particularly fire damage. I do not recommend you picking this skill on early level as you’ll die easily from self-inflicting damage.

Slaughtering enemies is what Krieg does best.

Weapons

Guns, glorious guns. Borderlands sees guns as if they are sacred relics. It cherishes the common weapons and glorifies the legendary ones. There are gazillion amounts of weapons you may find in this game. Thanks to the procedural generated system the game implements to the weapons specification, the chance of you to stumble upon the same identical specification of two weapons is close to never. The game will generate random weapons dropped from enemies killed or chests opened for players to loot and players always have the freedom to decide which weapons fit their arsenal best by looking and comparing the weapons. The procedural generation applies to all guns, shields, class mods, grenades, and relics, and the aim is to produce infinite amounts of different weapons. That is one step on understanding how looting system works on Borderlands.

Borderlands 2 has weapon types just as other shooter games have, the game has handgun, shotgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher. However, what makes these weapons become special is the rarity system that drives players' motivation to hunt for rare weapons. Weapons' (from guns to relics) rarity is distinguished by colors, the basic rarity starts from white, the most common type of weapon, green, the uncommon weapons, blue, the unique weapons, purple, the exquisite weapons, and orange, the legendary weapons. Should you have the DLC you'll be able to possess pearlescent rarity, seraph/pink weapons, and the latest rarity added through the latest DLC, effervescent rarity that makes your guns look like glimmering unicorn that shoots bullets.

All kinds of weapons can be found in chests.

How do you hunt for these rare and legendary weapons? Well, you have to fight tougher enemies, of course. However, since the game utilizes Random Number Generator (RNG) to generate loots, the drop chance for legendary items could be on any enemies or any chests, but of course there are higher chances of legendary items to drop from bosses or rare chests.   

Now that you understand the weapon types and the rarity system that Borderlands 2 has. Let's move on to the next weapon aspect that makes Borderlands an even more special shooter game. Weapon classification could be one of the most cliched feature a shooter game can have, Borderlands, on the other hand, tackles this traditional cliche by implementing an element of "manufacturer". Every single item that you can equip has its own unique manufacturer which produces that particular item. On top of that, each manufacturer has its own unique manufacturing feature(s).

An overview of all weapons manufacturer.

There is a total of 11 manufacturers in Borderlands 2, those are Anshin, Bandit, Dahl, Eridian, Hyperion, Jakobs, Maliwan, Pangolin, Tediore, Torgue, and Vladof, with only Anshin and Pangolin not manufacturing weapons, instead, they manufacture shields. 

1. Anshin focuses on elemental resistant shields

2. Bandit focuses on high magazine capacity weapons

3. Dahl specializes on burst shots

4. Eridian is an alien technology that produces only relics though there are laser guns that derives from eridium, an element produced by ancient alien technology, the guns aren't manufactured by Eridian

5. Hyperion boasts their high accuracy 

6. Jakobs focuses on high raw firepower

7. Maliwan specializes on elemental weapons

8. Pangolin produces high capacity shield

9. Tediore produces weapons that has unique reloading method, the wielder will throw the weapon and it will then explode like a grenade, the weapon will then be digistructed (a term used in Borderlands, a technology that conjures up items based on the digital blueprints) on the wielder's hand fully loaded. The more bullets you have left in your magazine when reloading, the higher the explosion damage. Where are you gamers whose fingers are itchy to press R even when your mag is 29/30? This gun is designed for you, you OCD nerds

10. Torgue is only for men, enough said

11. Vladof is for us, not you, not me, but us

The more leftover in the ammo clip the more damage a Tediore gun will do.

 Missions and Objectives

The world of Borderlands is never ending to travel.

Missions and quests are all scattered across the world of Borderlands, there are tons of side missions all with its own unique interesting side stories. Players are very much free to roam anywhere they want and to take on any quest they feel like completing before progressing to the main story questline. Quests' objectives will be shown beneath the map and waypoints will be shown on the map. Very simple, very easy to follow. Rewards come in a form of cash, experience point, unique items or common items. NPCs are scattered everywhere and if you see an exclamation mark on them, then they have dirty jobs for you to do.

Conclusion
 

Scooter's lack of chromosome is what makes him an interesting character.

To me, Borderlands 2 is one of those games that serves you compelling stories. Not only they design amazing gameplay for you but also they care about the lore and the characters they want to bring to live for the sake of gamers' enjoyments and their franchise's market. Apart from the unique combination of first-person shooter and role-playing game elements that it combines, Borderlands has very very hilarious jokes and ridiculously funny and loving characters. They crack jokes almost everytime and the lamer the jokes, the higher the sarcastic value and the funnier it becomes.

  
 

Higher chance to meet tougher enemies when playing multiplayer.

To summarize, Borderlands 2 has nothing else to serve to you but their close to endless content. They have a total of 12 DLCs, 4 in Season 1 and 5 in Season 2 and 3 on other releases. All contents are paid of course, but it is worth your while to play. Besides, Borderlands 2 is very cheap right now, you can get it on Steam whenever it's on sale, and make sure you buy The Handsome Collection edition because it is more worth it, it includes both Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel with the additional DLCs. The well written plot really supports the unique gameplay, the endless content make you feel like you don't even have enough time to actually "finish" the game, and it is not even close on being tedious. Farming for better loot can never be more fun and ridiculous if you are playing with three other retarded friends. Also, Gearbox always offer Shift Codes for players to earn Golden Keys, these keys are used to open a very rare chest on Sanctuary, it always contains rare weapons with purple rarity is the lowest rarity from this chest. Go to Gearbox's Twitter page to keep an eye for the codes. I hope I help you to understand what the game is about before you are buying it, man, just buy it, you are 7 years late but never too late to experience the fun!

 

Dark Souls easter egg in Borderlands 2.