Well, the embargo is up and I am free to talk about a bunch of year 2 Borderlands 3 stuff at long last. Moving into this second year, Gearbox is changing things up and I would say, scaling down a bit in terms of their planned content releases. Gone are the sprawling story DLCs, and for the first half of the year, the major offerings are twofold: A new game mode, Arms Race, and four new skill trees, one for each existing class of vault hunter.
I have been playing with all of this stuff for around a week now, and am ready to make my report. My opinion on the two different aspects of this new year 2 release couldn’t be more split. While I think that for the most part, the new skill trees are fantastic, I really, really do not like the new mode, Arms Race, which feels extremely half-baked and in need of a whole lot of patches to make it more interesting and worthwhile. So, where to begin?
Arms Race
Something just went wrong with the conception and execution of this mode. Originally I heard it was going to be like Call of Duty’s “Gun Game” where you progress through tiers of guns as you get kills with them, but instead Arms Race is really more of a PvE battle royale, but one that strips out so much of what makes Borderlands, Borderlands.
You start with nothing as you drop into the new map zone, a Dahl base bought by Salvador and Axton, who act as commentators for the “game show” of an event.
You begin looting white weapons, and you’re meant to work your way up to greens, blues, purples and a few legendaries as you move around the map, killing enemies and finding more loot.
But when I say you start with nothing, I mean you start with nothing. Your character does not have an action skill, any of your skill points or perks, or even your Guardian Rank bonuses and abilities. And unlike the loot, which you can acquire in time, there is no way to reacquire any of that other stuff.
What this means is that Arms Race feels very weird to play. With no action skills or tree perks, there is quite literally no difference between any of the four vault hunters anymore. And with no Guardian Rank perks, going into Fight for Your Life mode is harrowing because you have none of those special bonuses that extend the timer or let you aim better or anything like that. And in this mode, a single death means the entire thing is over, and you lose any loot you have not “extracted.”
This is not to say that Arms Race is particularly difficult. You simply need to play cautiously, not get surrounded or stand next to any exploding barrels that might insta-down you. The entire mode has its own balance system, so it’s easy enough to kill enemies even with white weapons if you hit your shots, and once you get to purple and legendaries, you’re just shredding.
There are just so many baffling decisions in Arms Race that I don’t even know where to start.
Why drop exclusive Arms Race legendaries that you cannot use in the actual mode?
Why force an extraction system which risks lost loot for the first time in the game’s history?
Why launch four new skill trees alongside a new mode which does not allow you to use any skill trees?
Why is there a shrinking storm when it always goes to the exact same final space?
Why is there only one boss and why can you beat him with quite literally any loadout at all?
Why does extracted loot get dumped directly in your vault rather than on your character, making it a mess to find among hundreds of other items you already have?
Why does this entire mode feel so slow and dead and boring?
It’s just such a weird turn for Borderlands, with impermanent or unusable loot, no skill trees or action skills or perks and yet you will have to play it for new weapons and new class mods for the new trees. I hope they keep working on it over the course of this year, because it just is not where it needs to be right now.
But I have good news!
Skill Trees
I really like the new skill trees. I only wish that they had launched say, two DLCs into last year so we actually had new content to play with them. Instead, because you literally cannot use them in Arms Race, you are just re-running old content. But here’s what I make of all four.
Zane (Shoulder Cannon)
Let me tell you, Zane with all his other abilities plus granting him the use of after-action skill anointments makes him absolutely nutty. The shoulder cannon itself is fine, I haven’t figured out a way to make it do truly massive damage yet, even with a new anointment that doubles its damage if you have a certain gun out, but just the ability to trigger ASE every few seconds makes Zane the most deadly he’s ever been. Plus, you can still have a drone or clone running at the same time, so it’s not like your 100% SNTL Cryo stuff is invalid either (and is now actually even better with grenade/shield ASEs). It’s truly the most powerful I’ve ever seen Zane.
Amara (Phaseflare)
Amara has a new action skill that allows her to plant a damaging orb on the map that powers up when you punch it. It is wild. This might be the fastest boss killer in the game to such an extent, I almost think it’s broken. The new skill tree itself adds more melee damage bonuses, but really it’s just in service of the orb. The orb is a little clunky for mobbing, considering you have to navigate it around by punching it or damaging enemies or pulling it to you, but for bosses, there’s really nothing better, given how much the damage spirals upward. I had a few issues with it getting stuck in the ground, but overall, it’s a monster, and easily one of the most broken new additions to the game.
FL4K (Gravity Trap/Loader Bot)
I do like FL4K’s Gravity Trap, which sort of does the opposite of Amara’s Phaseflare, in that it makes him less boss-focused and better at mobbing. I especially like the mod that makes enemies shake loose health, shields and ammo as they flutter around the air. The tree is mostly focused on pet damage and health, and yet I still find myself thinking FL4K pet builds are lacking. First, the new loader bot seems pretty buggy and kept getting stuck places. Second, even speccing fully into pet damage perks, I still feel like FL4K’s pets do any significant damage due to A) scaling issues and B) the AI just not being that great. I like the trap but this was not the pet fix he needed, from what I can tell. But I still have some more builds to work on. I did enjoy his new class mod which activates your pet’s attack command by shooting enemies (honestly, I’ve always thought attack command should be auto-active anyway).
Moze (Iron Cub)
Alright, this one I just…haven’t quite figured out yet. I know there is probably a way to make Iron Cub work, as it combines the power of Iron Bear with Moze’s ability to kill stuff by herself, but it ends up being in sort of a weird middleground. It does let her use weapons that have “during action skill” anoints (I’m still trying to figure out it Auto Bear anoints apply to Iron Cub), but overall Iron Bear has gotten so strong that it still feels like a pure Iron Bear build is better than the Cub, plus using some of the new tree for bigger bonuses than before. Iron Cub itself can feel like one of FL4K’s pets where the AI is just not amazing and as such, it isn’t doing as much damage as you want. But I may just not have figured out the right use case for this yet, nor do I have the new Moze class mod yet. So we’ll see.
So, those are all my thoughts on the new content for now, which I am happy to deliver now instead of hell week next week. Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks of everything.
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