A delicious plate filled to the rim with edibles.
In Borderlands 2 Gearbox not only improved on what made the original concept so enjoyable, but added new ideas that bring Pandora to life. The simple, boring AI that plagued the original game has been swept from the table. The various enemies that you'll face during your time in Pandora will have you changing your strategies on the fly, while providing a fun and enjoyable combat system to boot. The game not only rewards you with a fun experience but with loot as well.
Those that recall Pandora from the previous vault hunt know how much loot there was to find in the world. From a pistol that melted its target, to a shotgun that fired rockets, and to the infamous LOLOL Cannon that shot exploding light. For Gearbox's sequel, the guns go beyond just bullets; not only does that pistol melt its target, but instead of reloading, it could be thrown like a grenade and explode like fireworks.
The vast variation in guns is managed via manufacturers. Each one focuses on a certain type of weapon, giving them a distinct look and feel. For example, Maliwan weapons deal elemental damage, Jakob brands have a western style, and Hyperion weapons get better the longer the trigger is held. Having gun manufactures focus on a specific class of weapon gives players a sense of what best suits them.
But it isn't just the guns that get an upgrade, the grenades, shields, and characters receive them too. Shields now have specific attributes aside from the boring shield boosts, and grenades deal elemental damage and have statistics like fuse time and blast radius. While character mods are now broader in what skills they provide; giving you an XP boost for kills, or providing greater damage to specific guns.
If you played through the original Borderlands like I did, as a soldier, then you probably realized that by the end of that game your character became an unstoppable mass of destruction. That's less true with the sequel however, even with all of the added mechanics like gun manufactures Gearbox still manages to balance out the game and make it more difficult to spec your character out simultaneously in every skill tree.
The four new classes at your disposal may just be glorified versions of the originals, but new skills and abilities keep them feeling fresh till the very end. Playing as Zero, the robotic assassin, will have you cloaking into the battlefield, backstabbing enemies and making your escape without a single hit-point missing.
Each class has unique branching skill trees and abilities, which give the player the freedom to spec their character their own way. This leads to one play-through being different than another. For instance, playing as Zero could have you sneak through an enemy base and back stab any enemies you come across; while playing through as the same character, but down a different skill tree, could have you sniping the same foes from afar.
Those that played through the original game noticed that the cast of characters that you played as offered up very little dialogue; aside from a few one liners. For the sequel, however, the cast of the previous title appear as non-playable characters.
The entire casts of the previous title are now fully voiced and offer a slew of interesting dialogue that fans will love; it provides great back-story to the original vault hunters, which provides fans of the previous game the chance to understand and get to know the people they played as.
Borderlands 2's strong suit is its writing; during your time with the game, you'll run into characters that offer up interesting and humorous dialogue, along with side quests that take you into wildly different directions then the main quest line will. These quests can vary from helping out a robot who wants to be human, or deciding whether to give lewd photos of Moxxi to Marcus or return them to her. In cases like these, the side quests become more interesting than the main story line; which centers on you stopping the dictator of Pandora, Handsome Jack.
The core of the Borderlands 2 story is focused around Handsome Jack; a man who has taken the credit of finding The Vault, proclaimed himself dictator of Pandora, and is now leader of the Hyperion Corporation. After playing through the first few hours of the main game I quickly became bored of its villain, he comes off as flat and uninspired, leading much to be desired. Compared to the rest of the game, Handsome Jack feels like a slapped on piece of story only there to provide the player with a main goal. Even if the main quest isn't great, there are still the many fantastic side quests to play through that scratch the itch.
Playing through the first game with friends is what made it such a fun and enjoyable experience. Taking down the boss at the end of a quest with a group of your friends was a thrill. For Gearbox's sequel the only changes made to the original formula are ones that enhance the experience.
In the Original Borderlands, if you wanted to play with a group of people you had to quit out of the game and go back to the menu in order to set up a lobby to play online. That's been streamlined in its sequel; if you want to play with a couple of your friends, simply pause the game and switch your session to publicly accessible, friends only, invite only, LAN, or completely offline. In the previous title if you wanted to trade with someone, you had to pull up your inventory and drop what you wanted to trade on the ground; this was always a risk when playing with people you didn't know, since they could potentially take it for themselves and disconnect. That extra hurtle has been replaced with an all-new trade interface; if you want to trade a weapon simply open up the menu and trade with the preferred player.
The changes made to the co-op make the game much friendlier, especially on the PC; which is now fully integrated into Steamworks, instead of the previous GameSpy set up. Overall the PC is a much more streamlined version of its console brothers. Navigating the menus with a mouse is much faster and easier than with a controller. Same goes for actually playing the game, the keyboard and mouse set works perfectly, but you can still play with a controller if you prefer. The game also looks great on all the systems; aside from a few jaggy edges and grimy colors on the PS3, you still get that great looking cell shaded art no matter which system you play the game on.
Borderlands 2 is a polished sequel; the game play has the same great feel to it, and with better A.I the combat is much more enjoyable; the main story line leaves much to be desired, but plenty of fun and humorous side quests fill those holes. I was a big fan of the original game and the work done to the sequel offers a fun experience that any, not just fans of the original, should pick up and play.