Grenades. The wide variety and crazy effects. Loved bouncing Betty in BL1, tesla grenades and the tiny tina regenerating spell grenades like chain lightning in BL2, the four seasons in TPS, and BL3 has such a great system for combining them.
Playing back through the game, before mayhem, they’re just so fun to use. I did a “use everything you find at least once” run and discovered a new love for boucy-sticky grenades, especially artillery ones.
Edit: oh, and mirv has always been badass. Plus singularity grenades, even when they don’t do a huge amount of damage, they do great crowd control, plus its so funny to see enemies just go flying.
Mr. Torgue! I reset the game just to watch thr into to the badass crater of badassitude
Or TTaoDK torgue haha… Every time that man appears i smile
A bit of negativity though… BL3 doesn’t have enough Torgue
EXPLOOOOOOSIONS!
Here’s a few gems hehe
“Right now, you’re ranked fifty in the badass leaderboards, which puts you behind my grandma but ahead of a guy she gummed to death. IT TOOK SEVERAL HOURS.”
“THE TORGUE SHAREHOLDERS WIRED MY VOICEBOX WITH A DIGITAL CENSOR SO I CAN’T SAY STUFF LIKE SH®T, C®CK, OR P®SSY-F®CKIN’ D®CKBALLS. THAT’S LIKE HALF MY F®CKIN’ VOCABULARY.”
In the Wattle Gobbler DLC, he kinda asked us to help him find his long lost brother named Brad… Just throwing that out there in case some Borderlands writer is reading this
As for other things I like, I love all the manufacturer identities and artistic/ideological/functional connotations, but I must say that I’m a huge sucker for anything related to Maliwan. I even bought a Maliwan hoodie, lol.
I really like the implementation of class mods interacting with skill trees in BL3, not needing to build up the skill tree to use the point bonuses makes build creation much more flexible.
My favorite installment in BL3 compared to prior titles is the ability to Fast Travel via Echo menu. I can’t tell you the last time I ran/drove to a FT station.
Building off this I just want to say I love Legendary Class Mods in general. COMs have never felt as good to me as they do in BL3*. I love so many of the unique legendary effects and when those are combined with thoughtful skill boosts you get this really impressive synergy potential that motivates me to keep making new characters and trying new builds. I have 17 max level characters and each one has their own unique playstyle usually built around what Class Mod they use. I only wish there were more amazing Class Mods so I was inspired to make even more characters.
*Though I do miss Blue and Purple Class Mods having some relevance, BL2 had amazing COM design in its own way.
Pre-Sequel’s oz kits and coms are great. They encourage you to go for specific builds so you make use of specific skills and weapons to really explore all the game has to offer. There were just so many viable options that it didn’t feel like pigeon-holing, more of pushing you to build towards something. Ofc there’d be the mathematically most powerful option, but the power levels are so similar that there’s enough room for decision-making.
I think TPS is a highly underrated game. Sure the maps can be dragged out and the loot might not all be new, but the stuff it does well is just done near-perfectly that it wrestles the #1 spot of BL2 if you ask me what would be my favorite Borderlands game. The skill trees, the character writing, the story, the space aesthetic, the dark atmosphere, the oz kits, Claptrap DLC, world-building, there’s just so much here. And man, that finale has to be the best in the series for me. It pushed BL forward and gave so many ideas for sequels to build upon.
I could name more here but if it’s only one thing: the amount of horizontal progression in this game.
Sure things aren’t “perfect” but they never are and if you compare Borderlands 3 to other online RPGs then it becomes pretty obvious that most of them are a lot more restrictive in their build diversity / amount of relevant endgame content, usually because the developers want to force players into a certain gameplay style or there is no meaningful difference between gear of the same type leading to situations where either only the “newest” content is relevant (thus you get complains like “there is no content” in games that actually have a rather decent amount of content) or everything is just skins.
CLAPTRAP!
I loved the weird little robots in the first game, and how many different versions there’s been, especially in TPS, but the main guy is pretty awesome. I like when he gets to just be himself and being able to actually play as him during TPS was amazing.
Slam, in general. Playing TPS and using it to knockback enemies and deal damage was really fun. Even the slower slam in BL3 is useful if you build for it and get a good relic, like spark plug. Just jumping around and crashing down on enemies, only to watch them get annihilated by elemental effects is so cool.
if there is one thing i remember the most from older bl games i wish was in bl4 is (RARE) randomness / greatness
what i mean is this
-remember when you RANDOMLY summon a vermivorous? like you didnt even plan it, it just happens, happened to me, it was magic
-remember stumbling upon a pearl? or a random ass drop that made you be like OMG even if it was a ■■■■ gun? like you pop one of the piles on the ground and a legensdary pops out, in older titles this was a big deal with that low drop chance
-when 2 factions started fking each other up, and it was chaos but it was great chaos
it was this randomness that i loved, i have so many amazing memories of a random thing that just happened, bl1 i just saw a random pearl drop from some guy and was like… what the… whats this? or whats that big invinceble that just spawned here… is… is that a boss?
how many times did you think a pearl is just a blue and after going through the drops again you notice OMG A PEARL ( bl1 anybody)
i hope they return this in bl4,
make a few special rare spawning mobs more that can spawn anywhere or evolve, or whatever else random
that feeling of a rainbow or pearl dropping just so sweet out of the blue with its 0.01 chance or whatever it was in bl1 honestly dont know but it was rly low to have some things happen there
another example would be something like the cobra in bl2, ( now was it cool how it was done? not rly, was it a great random thing once it happened ? yes… yes it was)
The monowheel vehicles are a great addition to the game, particularly with the wheel with the blades on. Great fun ‘squishing bitches’ as Scooter once said.
