Jolly Cooperation - Borderlands 3 (4)

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for another chapter of Jolly Cooperation, featuring Borderlands 3, the series where I break down the most-popular cooperative games. Last week, I addressed several of Borderlands 3's most glaring issues that had rear up its ugly head over the course of a long-term hundred hour play-through. Neither of them are necessarily game-breaking as if they were, I would not have spent that many hours into the game in the first place. Which brings me to the topic at hand today which is the post-game content.

Borderlands 3 is a pretty long game if you attempt to complete both the main and side quests. While subsequent play through may be faster, you would be looking at spending roughly 50-60 hours in the base game alone. Which should more of less attest for the amount of content that is stuffed into this game. 

After you are done with that, that is when the post-game content begins also known as, the real meat of the game where you truly dive into the game's end-game with a much deeper focus on itemization, builds and mechanics.

Where you would normally be able to breeze through the main campaign with relative ease granted you aim to complete a healthy amount of side quests, the post-game contents are significantly more challenging. And with more challenging enemies, therein lies the bonus of additional loot and experience. The game's level caps of at 60, at which point you will then transition to Guardian Levels which work similar to the prestige levels of most games of this genre.

The post-game mode dubbed, Mayhem difficulty, are a series of increasingly stronger enemies ranging all the way from Mayhem 1 till 10. And make no mistake about it, the jump from one Mayhem level to the other is a significant one. The ultimate goal is to reach Mayhem 10 but, functionally, most of the game's Legendary loot are gated only up till Mayhem 6. That being said, I would still strongly recommend aiming to play at Mayhem 10 where that is where the absolute best loot are found.

Aside from the increasing difficulty, the Mayhem difficulties also add a series of modifiers which throw a little curve ball into your usual game. An example of which can be seen above with the modifier which cause heads to be significantly larger making it easier to score critical hits. While this may sound like a benefit, it actually works as a double-edged sword as enemies can now score critical hits on you more easily too. Another one of worth note, available in higher Mayhem levels, is one called Rogue-Lite where going down results in an immediate death as opposed to the usual downed stance. My personal advice is to always go for the Lootsplosion modifier which is exactly what the name suggests.

Aside from increased enemy difficulty and better loot drops, there are also a whole host of post-game challenges such as the Takedowns, Proving Grounds and Circle of Slaughter. These act as end-game maps where you either play through a raid (Takedown), timed raid (Proving Grounds) or wave survival (Circle of Slaughter). These maps really bring out the best of the game's tight shooting mechanics and emphasizes teamwork if you are playing with party members. The Takedowns are a personal favorite of mine.

While I found the base game's story to be mostly entertaining and whimsical, it was the post-game content which kept me coming back for more. Each time in a quest to get better loot and refine my build even further to ascend to the next level of Mayhem. And once I finally do get to the next level of Mayhem, it was a whole new challenge where I had to repeat the entire process all over again. Tiring as it may sound, there was actually not a single dull moment as I worked out which gear and skills best suited my primary character, Moze.

The post-game levels truly test your mettle and forces you to improve if you are to move up the difficulty ladder. It was either adapt and survive or continue to fall behind. Something I learned early on in Mayhem 2 difficulty where the build I had been using throughout the base game was not going to cut it anymore despite the best optimizations down that route.

At that point, I had to spend a healthy amount of time outside the game researching builds and gears coming up with the best way to tackle higher difficulties while maintaining my desired play style. It took a bit of time and after a whole solid day of trouble shooting, I was finally able to reach a point where I could competently tackle enemies at the higher Mayhem levels.

Moving up the ladder in difficulty also meant better loot. Not just in terms of strength but, also in drops as legendary gear had a higher drop rate in the higher difficulties. While we would be like moth to a flame whenever a legendary item dropped in the base game, we began to casually shrug it off the further we rose in the Mayhem levels. It would even come to a point, where I had too many copies of a single type of legendary item that I would have to sell it off.

I have seen instances where the legendary items would not even be picked up as a better version was already available to the player. Nevertheless, I have yet to reach that level in the game and these legendary items still sell for a lot of money even if they were something I already owned a copy of.

Of course, I would be remiss to mention a big part of the post-game being so much fun was down to my three other trusty cooperative buddies who stuck with me throughout my journey in the Borderlands. Working together through the tough raids and dungeons, failing and repeating it all again until we succeeded was the bittersweet story of many of our weeknights. And given the chance, I would gladly do it all over again.

Which brings us back all the way to the title of this series, Jolly Cooperation. Over the years, there have been many cooperative titles that we have played together. Some that we stuck through with, others that we let go off. Some that we only played the main campaign for with others being long term investments. Borderlands 3 turned out to be much more than I had ever expected with an incredibly robust main campaign and, an equally, compelling post-game.

There is no doubt that it has its fair share of deficiencies, I have even dedicated an entire article to it. And at times, it certainly does feel rather dated compared to the other offerings in the market. But as a whole, Borderlands 3 is certainly a very difficult formula to beat. It combines a solid base, robust cooperative play and well though out end game goals which help the game be so much more than the sum of its parts.

And with all that said, we have only just talked about the base game itself. Having the complete version of the game, this includes all the DLCs which we have yet to go through. But that is a topic for the next chapter as I would be then discussing the downloadable content which add more than a sizable addition to the game's story. Until then, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!