NOTE: I only played Campaign. I'm sure side missions and endgame will change my opinion for the good or the worse.
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I tried Borderlands 3 weekend trial. Finished 17 out of 23 missions in first 2 days. Didn't feel like finishing it on Sunday as I've no idea what's happening in the story, nor do I give a damn about the story at this point.
The gameplay is GREAT. The bosses are some of the best. The gunplay is great. But, that's it.
A lot of characters are dull. I genuinely listened to every line and tried to like it (and there were great moments!) but it was rather dull. The ping system feels like a last minute thing and it sucks because there's so much they could've done with it. Seems it's a necessity in this game as it's hard to direct where to go or what to do without it. Its also a game that expects you to get a second wind, as it's not easy to tell when friendly goes down or request revive. Such a shame they didn't expand on the ping system for this as that would've solved a lot of issues with the game.
It also felt like they didn't balance the mid game. There was a time halfway through the game's campaign that the enemies were way higher difficulty than me, and the loot it was giving me was atleast 3 levels higher. It made me lose interest in the guns I was receiving since I couldn't use them anyway, and I was spending more time clearing my inventory than deciding what to keep.
Then these absolutely mundane and shitty mission styles that pissed me off to the extend that I didn't see the story progressing even an inch. Yes, you finally open vaults, two of them, but every weapon I looted I ended up selling because this vault loot was garbage. But that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that every mission is a "go here and talk to him. Oh you wanna talk to him, but he's not here. Go talk to her. Oh she tells you to find something for her. You go talk to someone else to get that fragment. But oh shit, the person died in a funny way, now the bandits are here, now you gotta drive to the opposite end of the game. Now kill bad guys. Now talk to him. Now talk to her. Now give her fragment. Now place the fragment. Now fight BOSS. Now talk to him. Now go back to ship. Now talk to him. Oh you think this mission ended? Think again! Ship is invaded. Now go kill baddies. Now talk to her. MISSION ENDED".
Holy fucking SHIT. Infuriating. So infuriating. Every time a mission is presented as Go get A from B, it becomes Go get A from B, but A is now in 10 different fragments, and the conversation is now between 10 different people, in ten different locations, in 10 different corners of the game world, killing enemies along the way.
The way the missions are designed, it was designed purposely to extend the mission length. Even with the absolutely great fast travel, things felt slow and sloggish. By the 12th mission, I don't think I cared about any weapons and I was happy with the Level 24 guns that I had, and I sure as shit didn't think the story was going anywhere to really care. I sold everything I looted, and stuck with 4 guns.
It's like it took influences from Destiny 2 and I don't think it helped it. The world felt linear in a long stretch of roads and lands with nothing in between and no reason to explore the between. The game also starts breaking apart towards the latter missions, with audio and mission glitches totally ruining the game. No sound, or just grunting sounds, or car constantly honking, or hearing multiple chat voices or really delayed voices or out of place voices, or mission not progressing because something glitched out, and you hope with each restart the glitch is not replicated or you just wasted time.
But I'm sure it's endgame is great, right? I heard it is.
Thanks for the free weekend, Randy. It was fun while it lasted. Will get it at $9.99 for that endgame.
