Instead of going to find it… I’ll just do my best to list it from memory (and it’s not going to be complete)
ammo economy in general was ruined from the first game. The entire ‘guardian’ legendary weapon set were removed, and most class mods no longer have any ammo regeneration unless certain characters. Lots of guns now shoot multiple bullets per shot, making this problem even worse.
Backpack space was lowered from the first game, while equippables was increased. Overall space was increased with the bank included… but not by much. I think the difference is 2.
The rock, paper, scissors health types first introduced in the general knoxx DLC were really leaned into really hard, which means it’s very handy to have a weapon of each element type on your person.
These three were my major issues. It’s a LOOTER SHOOTER. I need to LOOT and SHOOT. These three points made it more of a chore to do the base game loop at higher levels, especially considering that most characters had only a couple preferred weapon types. Combining all three points meant I was usually balancing 3 weapons of different types so the ammo didn’t overlap with different elements so I could effectively shoot fleshy, shielded, and armored enemies… and then sometimes slag.
There are some other gripes about the skill trees being overall worse than the first game, the DLC’s eluding to the best fights from 1 and being really disappointing (looking at you Crawmerex), and the lack of any real changes in the enemies from the first game. Sure there were plenty of new skins, but the actions didn’t change at all.
I’m sure there were more, but these points were enough to show me that the dev team was moving in a direction I wasn’t particularly excited to play. The story and most boss fights were way better than 1’s. So there was some positive growth, but in terms of overall gameplay I felt that the game was a massive downturn from where I would have liked to see the game go.
I noted the issues with gearbox near the end of the borderlands 2 cycle and put them on my ‘I’ll buy it when it drops down to under $10 for everything’ category.
I have posted a fully compiled list for 2 that put me off further first day spending posted somewhere. I’m sure I could find it if needed.
I distinctly remember playing co-op and having the second player open the map in borderlands 1 while driving around as a pseudo mini map. As much as ‘those were the days’, I don’t yearn for them back.
Now, having various UI elements as toggles I could totally get behind.
Core keeper, Webfishing, Helldivers 2, and powerwashing simulator. I’ve been in a very chill gaming mood aside from the hectic fire fights of helldivers.
Amazingly… this bond is almost exclusively going to be used on bug planets… since the weapons are melee focused and going melee vs bots or squids is not a great idea.
Now they’re made with marketable ‘passion’, ‘dedication’, and a team with ‘a family atmosphere’. My personal favorite ‘respect for the lore and previous games in the series’ definitely never has made a triple A game worse for wear.
Disingenuous buzzwords with no objective meaning behind them are my favorite things to hear in a game. It tells me to steer clear as far away as I possibly can. Which is a shame because I’d like to be excited about vampire: the masquerade 2.
I’ve been finishing up random challenges in monster hunter wilds. There’s not much left on the ‘achievable without rng shenanigans’ list for me to get, so I’ve started planning for the next one.
Metal bringer. It’s a looter rogue lite in which you play as the daughter of amazing science family whose legacy has been besmirched or something, causing you to have to get out into a world of bots that need some good 'sploding.
The game loop eventually leads to starting with a massive mech and trashing the early game. The boss designs and weapons are really nice though some of the areas give me a headache.
As much as I’d have liked it to be some kind of active or skill based game, it was either going to be webfishing or revolution idle.
I recently picked up secrets of grindea, but after having binged it for a few days, I’m grinded out. I need to earn so much gold if I want to collect all the things and it feels like my combat power has hit a wall. There are a few non-grind things I could tackle, but I’ll just wait a bit and let burnout go away.