Back into the Solitary Desert

A while ago I took a look at the original Borderlands, based on all the time I’d played it and how much I enjoyed that title. It has been some time since then, though, and a number of games came out for the series that I had sampled since. Not just Borderlands 2 but also The Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 3, two adventure titles, a Wonderlands spin-off… oh, and yeah, a really awful movie. With the new game, Borderlands 4, coming out soon (supposedly in September, 2025, although we shall see since video game release dates can be pretty fluid) it seemed like a good idea to go back through and play through the various games of the series to get ready for the new adventure.

So we’re clear, I started this project a while ago, and I really wanted to have some new material to work from when I started reviewing these games. This will be a slow process, as I only just recently got through Borderlands 2 Ultimate Vault Hunter mode for the first time, and am now deep into a full playthrough of The Presequel (the first since I didn’t enjoy my very first play of the game and stopped around level 10 last time) so that I can review that at some point coming soon. This series is based not just on my love of the games (at least, the first two) but also my desire to really see how it has evolved and whether they hold up over time. So, back to Pandora, and into the solitary wastes, for the first adventure in the series.

Although, okay, not so solitary as I’ve been playing through the games with my nephew, who also really likes the franchise, and we both decided that a full playthrough, from one end of the franchise to the other, was warranted. So we dived into the series together, with me picking Lilith the Siren and him playing Roland the Soldier, so that we could see if Borderlands, the original title, was still worth playing 16 years later.

The short answer is “yes”, although there are some caveats. I have spent most of my time with the franchise (as I’m sure most players have) with Borderlands 2. That game has a robust set of systems that built well off of the original Borderlands, and it really iterated well in all the ways that mattered, such that it felt like all the sequels (and pre-sequels) have been struggling to recapture that magic. Borderlands, though, didn’t have the time to absorb improvements, or to see where the franchise would go. It had to define itself (borrowing liberally from Mad MaxStarted with a single 1970s Australian exploitation flick (a popular genre in the country at the time), the Mad Max series went on to spawn three sequels, an entire genre, style, and what many consider the greatest action film of all time, Fury Road. Not bad from a little low-budget film about cars smashing each other after the fall of society. in the process) and figure out just what it wanted to be. In many ways that leaves this game feeling a little flat, a touch underwhelming… just a little off.

I had to push all that aside, of course, so I could try to enjoy Borderlands on its own merits, and I do have to say that going back and involving yourself in the game the way it is can be a fun experience. We played through the game twice over, Playthrough 1 and Playthrough 2 (what would become Normal Mode and True Vault Hunter Mode in later games) and went through everything to make sure we got the full experience. And it was fun, make no mistake, but the basic flaws of the game do shine through once you’ve spent a long time away from it, seeing all the ways the series could improve as it iterated along.

The basic fun of Borderlands is still there. The fun of picking up guns, shooting, blasting away with a partner while you use your skills and watch enemies melt around you, is still just as fun as ever. There’s a simple, pure joy to finding a new gun, picking it up, using it on new enemies, and seeing the die faster. Borderlands knows the simple, inherent thrill of upgrading, searching for treasure, leveling up, and doing that gameplay loop over and over again. That’s all still there in the game, and it’s still just as fun as ever to see it through.

The combat is also still nice and weighty. While the later games introduced more gun types, more variety, more you can do, the simple thrill of the gunplay holds up. Controls are tight and responsive, you can lay waste to a ton of enemies with good aim and plenty of ammo… it all just works. While I’m used to the sequel, with its bevvy of new gun types, I didn’t necessarily feel like I was sorely lacking in those options while I played through this first game. I didn’t have all the guns I was used to, but then neither did the enemies, so it felt balanced. Solid.

So yeah, I did like my time back on Pandora, running the basic missions and going across the wastes, but as I said, there are caveats on that as well. The game does lack a number of features that, in retrospect, I really wish were in the game. That’s even with playing on the Game of the Year Remaster that Gearbox put out, which back-ported a number of quality of life improvements. In fact, in some ways, the quality of life improvements ruined the experience for me as it “balanced” a game that wasn’t meant to be as balanced.

For one, enemies are far less susceptible to elemental damage. In the original version you could set shock, or corrode, or fire on one enemy and they’d spread it around amongst themselves. It made elemental damage very powerful, and in the late game of second playthrough, that was also essential to survival. But now, enemies handle elemental damage more like in Borderlands 2. They don’t spread it around, but they also resist it more. A fire-type enemy will brush off fire damage like it’s nothing, when before they at least took the damage. Maybe this is how the game was “intended”, but it also makes late game areas incredibly hard to get through. It’s balanced far more against the players than it used to be. You want to feel like a walking tank, and you now can’t.

The game is also pretty flaky now in multiplayer. I noticed in a lot of areas, when playing with a partner, that I’d head into a transition zone and the game would just crash. Loading screen would come up, game would spin for a bit, then an error window would pop up and I’d get kicked out of the game. This happened to the host specifically, with the game living or dying by their service. If we switched players hosting, they’d be the one to see the error. It wouldn’t always happen, but when it did it often meant having to redo work just getting back where we were (even if “progress” in the game was saved).

This becomes a more obvious issue when you consider that some of Borderlands 2’s better features, like a fast travel station in every zone of the DLC areas, weren’t ported back to the original title. When playing T-Bone Junction, for example, there’s so much driving to get to any of the other zones, and it really sucked driving five minutes to get to the area we needed to be at, only for the game to crash, kicking us all out, forcing us to do that drive again once we loaded back in. It made certain sections of the game nearly unplayable, and we only pushed through by sheer determination so I could do this review. Without that, I would have ditched the game after its tenth crash (to say nothing of its hundredth, and I’m not being hyperbolic there).

And then there are the basic things about the first Borderlands that I really do think are better in the sequels. There’s a forlorn loneliness to the original game, as you’re wandering around in barren wastes, barely meeting anyone as you’re running random missions. Borderlands 2 has a more dense and populated world, with a real storyline going on through it, but Borderlands lacks all that. It’s sparse, it’s empty, and over time that starts to feel overbearing. Once you get used to the sequel it’s hard to go back to the emptiness of the original (although, trust me, that’s a double-edged sword that can swing hard the other way, as we’ll discuss soon enough).

I also wish there was a greater variety of enemies. Once you’ve completed the first section of the game, the missions and related areas of Fyrestone you’ve seen (almost) all the enemies the game has through at you. Bandits, skags, and rakk are the whole of your experience (at least until the Eridian and Atlas show up in the last zones, and some new types arrive in the expansions). While I don’t mind fighting these guys I do wish there was more variety to the enemies to make everything feel less repetitive. That’s another thing Borderlands 2 corrects.

And, really, some of the missions are just terrible. If rescuing claptraps wasn’t required to expand my backpack, I wouldn’t bother with them at all. They eventually stop giving you expansions (in second playthrough) and only have equipment mods from there, and I was sorely tempted to ignore them because what’s the point? A tiny amount of experience and not much of value? Same goes for the elemental mining missions that provide a meager upgrade to the element associated with your power? When elements are drastically weakened in the GotY edition, why bother with these at all? It’s just wasted time in a barren game.

Finally, I really don’t see the point in Moxxi’s Underdome. This was the second expansion for the game, but fighting my way through the mission, which is just a whole lot of repetitive combat, over and over, for hours on end, without any real benefit beyond, eventually, getting a skill point, feels utterly pointless. Those couple of skill points I could get (for doing two playthroughs of the missions) weren’t worth the effort. And considering that you don’t get any experience for doing it, and most of the weapons dropped between rounds are utter crap, why even bother? This expansion could have been interesting, but instead it’s just makework and I didn’t want to do it.

So yeah, the first Borderlands is rough. The Game of the Year Remaster doesn’t help matters, with its instability issues and changes to balance, but at its core Borderlands is still a strange, empty game. I like it, from time to time, but it’s hard for me to get back into it the way I can with Borderlands 2. The sequel is a fun time whenever I go back to it, playing through again and enjoying the diversity of skills and combat, but the first game feels weaker, flatter, and emptier in ways that hold it back. It was a fantastic first effort from Gearbox, but it definitely gets outshined in all aspects by what came next.