Jolly Cooperation: Borderlands 3 (2)

Hello everyone and welcome back to the third chapter of Jolly Cooperation featuring Borderlands 3. In the first part, I went through my initial impressions of Gearbox's latest looter shooter. Later on, I went through a dedicated article explaining the best way to optimize the game's visual settings to get the best possible visual and gameplay experience possible out of this title. Today, we will be dissecting exactly what makes Borderlands 3 the game that it is. More specifically, digging deeper into the "looter" aspect of this looter shooter.

Before I continue any further, it is important to preface this article by mentioning that I almost exclusively played this game cooperatively with three other party members. Hence, the aforementioned Jolly Cooperation title header. On top of that, we decided to play the game in Co-opetition Mode which meant that drops were shared rather than being individualized while the game would be scaled to the hosting member's level. Part of the reason we chose this mode was because it we felt this mode most accurately embodied the spirit of past Borderlands experiences. On top of that, we did not want to suffer from loot fatigue or saturation.

Speaking of loot, this is something that Borderlands 3 prides itself upon. Even at the beginning of the game, you will be rewarded with a great number of drops and as you progress further into the game, these drops become exponentially more valuable. While unique drops would be dropped only by bosses initially, they would start to become a more common place drop the higher level you progress towards.

Initially, things were understandably difficult as getting the right set of weapons and auxiliary items to fit your character best was a little tricky to say the least. And since I already had a planned build in mind, that further restricted the viability of weapons that were made available to me.

Even up till the halfway point of the game, I was mostly running around equipped with rare or uncommon weapons. Even when I got my first unique weapon drop, it was not something that quite fit the bill of what I was looking for. Even so, the feeling of getting a unique was certainly a rewarding one! While it may sound like a little bit of a criticism towards the game, this is something that Borderlands 3 has certainly taken a good look at and worked it towards its strength. Though I may not have been using unique weapons until a good portion later in the game, the non-unique weapons that I received were still very much viable and, except for certain modifiers, remained very comparable to the unique guns in the game.

On top of that, the game would also infrequently rewards players with interesting quest specific unique weapons throughout the game which served as a healthy middle ground between rare and legendary weapons. Where its predecessor or other looter shooters for the matter often fell short, this is a portion where Borderlands 3 really shone and a good part of the reason why I enjoy this installment in the series the most. The fact that the early game is not relegated to a process where players simply slog their way through before getting end-game loot was something I felt to be a very important achievement on Gearbox's half and a big part of the reason I kept wanting to go back into the game.

Now aside from character loot, Gearbox were also smart enough to include new customization options for vehicles too in Borderlands 3. Hence, even more loot to look out for roaming around the open world. Find more car parts from roaming enemy vehicles, hijack them and use them to customize the three available vehicle options available in the game. The best part is, these modifications actually make a tangible effect to the way each vehicle performs.

With the emphasis of loot and customization options, it would have been fair to assume that the game developers would then go light on the game's story progression. Fortunately, that is not the case here as the game has a fairly robust and lengthy campaign spanning over multiple worlds. A big step up over the previous installment (that I played, Borderlands 2) and, in my personal opinion, better paced too. Aside from the main and side quests, there are also a large variety of collectibles and audio logs to look out for which serve to add colour to Borderlands' lore.

Earlier I mentioned, the game is split into multiple worlds. Each one bigger than the next and sporting extremely detailed environments, each one different from the next. It is hard for me to pick a favorite as they all have their own distinct charms while looking completely different from one another. Going back to the looting aspect that I first talked about. One part of the formula which kept the entire experience fresh throughout the play-through were these vast and varied worlds where there would always be something new to look forth on top of the rain of loot. 

That being said, Borderlands 3 is not all sunshine and rainbows as it does have its fair share of issues too. In my experience, these issues have largely stemmed from performance issues resulting in game crashes affecting the hosts which cause the entire session to run to a halt. Nevertheless, that would be a discussion for another day as that would work up to be the focus on the next chapter of Jolly Cooperation. In the meantime, if you do have any questions about Borderlands 3, do not hesitate to leave a comment below and I would be more than happy to answer it as best as I can. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!