Locations could be a little more varied, same for the enemies. There’s some nice areas, but it’s all kind of blue and grey.
Some more repeatable stuff would have been nice. It’s OK, but not as wide-ranging as BL2. I really like the moonstone chest runs though, shame there’s only 4 of them. Every area should have one.
Too many skills scale badly into UVHM, especially defensive ones. Being tanky still boils down to just using a DPS build and the Hail.
TPS is has amazing combat mechanics though, and is a pretty great game, it just doesn’t have as much content as BL2
A bit late to this party but I just thought of TPS a couple of days ago and I’ve got a lot of pet peeves with the game and then I saw this topic so here goes whatever I can think of right now.
I personally think the story is pretty crap. The base idea is nice but it’s very lacking IMO. You spend a ton of time on Elpis and then you get to Helios and when things finally seem to get interesting you can pretty much snap your fingers and the story is finished.
There’s also just some really annoying stuff like the fact that you apparently built a robot army but all you ever see is those 3-4 loaders in Lunar that you can make fight with you and they are placed so out of the way that they never even help any
Claptastic (which I’ll just call DLC from now on) has good story, though.
Lack of humor. Or maybe just lack of BL2 style humor. I think the game is pretty stale in this category. There are very few things in the game that made me chuckle even the first time while there’s still stuff I’d smile to if I replayed BL2 right now. There’s also a lot of “references” to BL2 which to me were just frigging annoying because they lacked the same context and trying to retell someone else’s jokes differently just doesn’t work out. “Back to you voice in my head” by the sports reporter with the obvious bagman reference always makes me gringe.
I think the DLC makes a pretty good correction in this regard too but that doesn’t help the main game.
I also just wanna throw this out here but I hate the aussie bandits and especially the voice of outlaws, like Jesus christ can you not.
Lack of content. Yeah, you know. Quite the common complaint. Only one real DLC, the only raid boss is just the end boss again (who, going back to the story at number 1, is super uninteresting and just kinda thrown in there). Not a whole lot any bosses or minibosses to begin with. There’s like a quarter of the amount of maps compared to BL2 to begin with.
Continuing with lack of content I might also say most of the maps are just pretty bad. To my eyes almost every map on Elpis looks exactly one and the same and what am I actually doing on those maps? Mostly running or driving. The distances between enemies are usually so large and empty that it makes me wonder who I’m supposed to be “shooting and looting” anyway. I’ll mention lack of minibosses as legendary sources again but it also lacks tubbies or midgets so a lot of the areas, once you’re done with your quests there are just done as the mobbing isn’t quite there either. Why don’t the mobs at the robot factory respawn after story? Why can’t I have a snowstorm hurricane big fight at the middle of HoH after story?
UVHM. The leveling experience in TPS UVHM is absolutely HORRIBLE. I think it took 4 full reset playthroughs of the story to get from 50 to 70. In BL2 I can get from 50 to 72 before I even finish the base game by visiting some DLC’s every now and then. If I don’t feel like doing something right now I can go do something else (lack of content again). The enemies are worth nothing (or just that there aren’t much of them to begin with). When you get to 70 there’s nothing to do but reset your campaign and do it one more time at max level.
I’m pretty sure enemies also have less health which I guess is nice because the scaling in BL2 could be pretty unforgiving but I think it went a bit overboard because the game is really easy for the most part. I did 99 % clear of the game (didn’t do raid boss but every other quest in the game including DLCs) with I think 3 deaths total… BL2 at 72 occasionally just butchers me and that’s part of the fun of the game. Also, no OP levels to ramp it up a bit just hurts even more.
Frost is stupidly strong. I would stand 100 % behind frost if it slowed enemies down like it does you but just freezing them is super OP. While I do concede Fridgia is one of the most efficient, if not the most efficient freezing tool in the game I definitely should not be able to pick it up at the end of TVHM at lvl 50 then proceed to level my guy all the way to 64 or something by just running straight lines from nearest enemy to the next one and spraying it towards their head as I go (I did this). Even the weaker frost guns you can just shoot it towards someone until they freeze and it’s good night, Gracie. I don’t mind slag being gone and I understand people’s opinion on that matter but I want to point out that at least slagged enemies are still actually threatening you and fighting back.
The grinder. I could write another wall of text about this POS but I’ll try to keep it brief because this post is too long to begin with. Besides vendor farming this thing is basically the only way to get a quite a few legendaries in the game. Using it is not a good experience at all. The Dahl guy gets really annoying the whole grinding process is just the ultimate read only / dashboard grind which is not fun to begin with.
Some honorable mentions:
Unskippable, longass dialogues between characters. In BL2 I can mostly just ignore them because they don’t progress anything and the ones that do get automatically checked if you leave the area. Not in TPS. Jesus the part after Meriff is painful making you just stand there listening to like 2 minutes of dialogue.
Holodome enemy variety is too small. Enemy variety in general is pretty bad but for a circle of destruction to be a full DLC I’d expect it to be more fun as what it is. Although that’s coming from someone who generally doesn’t enjoy survivals too much in BLs. The areas size is also somewhat problematic at times.
Corrosion is basically useless element in the base game.
One of the best items in the game is tied to owning another game and you only get a once in a lifetime shot at picking it at the appropriate level and hope for good parts. You’d think Grog Nozzle 1 day only farming opportunity was bad? This is worse.
Hmh, I think that’s about it, finally. That was a lot longer than I thought it would be…
