When you chose a character, it says what their favorite weapons are. I dont know exactly what that means (ie, do they get bonuses if they use those weapons? if so, it doesnt specify that anywhere), but Ive been sticking to the favorite weapons for each character.
As far as I can tell the class mods often give bonuses to the favored weapon. For example the siren's mercenary mod increases SMG damage and the hunter's sniper mod increases sniper rifle damage. I was skeptical of the weapon system at first, but I ended up really liking the variety. The fast enemy respawns and arcade like feel were a plus. Vehicles are hard to control on the PC and don't have any upgrades or anything. Invisible walls are annoying. Could have been deeper in a lot of ways and if it had a plot it must have been very forgettable as I can't remember it for the life of me. I liked the art style and cell style rendering very much. Overall recommended.
Quote:Original post by kryat I think where this game really fails is its presentation of information to the player about the state of the character. For example, the glaring oversight of not displaying class mod bonuses on the Skill Tree page. It took me a while and a lot of experimenting to understand that class-mod bonuses only apply if you have atleast 1 point applied to the skill already. Not automatically applying Backback SDUs or Elemental Artifacts. Not explaining what the hell ammo SDUs do (not to mention nobody ever drops SDUs). It also took me forever to realize that one could spawn two cars, even in single player mode).
I agree, it felt like the UI was a few iterations away from being what it should have been. In general, most of the information with regard to how buffs and nerfs are affecting your character/weapons is poorly handled. For instance, it's not clear that class mod bonuses only apply to talents you have already purchased. Along the same lines, it's not clear that it always maxes out at level 5 (thus you can't buff something you already have maxed). It wasn't very clear that you could swap around elemental artifacts since it's the one button in the talent tree page that works differently from the rest. Sometimes it's not clear whether the values shown for weapon damage/fire-rate/accuracy/etc. are before or after any special weapon bonuses are applied. If it's before, then the comparison feature is totally useless since it only compares shown values, and if it's after, then it's confusing because you're being shown redundant information for the weapons.
Another thing that bothered me was that weapon value was based largely on rarity, which was pretty silly considering that higher-level common weapons were more effective yet cost less. There was some speculation in the community that rare weapons had some hidden bonuses that weren't being listed, which would explain their value, but that makes comparison a lot more difficult as well. I think in general that the comparison feature wasn't fully thought out -- I can compare two numbers side-by-side and perform simple multiplication, I don't need a tool for that unless it's also performing other useful calculations like DPS wrt reload time.
If you played Hellgate: London then you've got a pretty good idea of what you're in for. I played it on XBox and then on PC, and found the PC version way easier, due to the "headshots as critical hits" dynamic they use. The structure is very diablo-alike, with story quests, side quests, drops of various flavors and colors and entirely skippable dialogue. It's a pretty good time, if a little mindless, and the skill tree makes for some neat character options.
My main beef with it is the strictly enforce level restrictions. The damage you deal is determined by comparing your character level to the target, so the same gun will do no damage to a monster who's four levels above you, and will one-shot a critter four levels beneath you, and that very narrow bell curve will dictate your pace through the game, since no amount of hard work, ingenuity or skill synergy will let you win a fight that's "out of your league", and you don't get any experience for "slumming" with lowbies.
Multiplayer's good, but online it feels like WoW, just padding around achieving mission objectives with some backup instead of alone, but there's no appreciable strategy or real need to communicate. Playing split-screen on my buddy's PS3 was a hoot, though, because we could see both screens and laugh about funny things that an online partner might not have noticed.
Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage If you played Hellgate: London then you've got a pretty good idea of what you're in for.
That's a really bad comparison. Hellgate was not executed as well as Borderlands. In fact that game was pretty tedious and dull. Borderlands does not have random quests or environments either.
The parts that are random in Borderlands: item drops and (to a lesser degree) monsters, work very well too.
