Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

ACHTUNG! SPOILERS!

I had expected this game since the launch of its Doomsday trailer. I was already having much fun with the first episode, mainly in single player, even if it was a little bit slower than in coop in some parts. I was incredibly excited about that, almost sure it would have been great. The impression after the first hours was great: more Clap Trap, cool classes, cool non player characters. But immediately after, there was something wrong going on. I hadn't realized what it was yet, so I kept going.
The first thing that made me almost shout "holy crap! WTF is this!?" were the childish death cries of the midgets, the yogy bear voices of the Goliaths, and the voice acting of the enemies in general. I started wondering "Where the hell are the mad and desperate cries of the Borderlands 1 midgets and psychos? And where are the body parts of the enemies I have killed with my shotgun? Why all the deaths look so similar now?". Then i looked in to the gearbox forums and I discovered that gore had been censored in the versions of all the nations. Bad news!
But this wasn't the worst thing. A real point of strength in BL1 was the non linearity and vastness of all the maps. It was amazing. In BL2 this has been broken in many of the maps I have explored during my play through. I discovered that often maps are quite narrow and there is one and only way to go from "A" to "B"; in addition to that some side missions bring the player more times in the same map, but not at the same time, so that I had for example to go through a certain map the first time before entering Sanctuary, the second one right after.
Then came that idiot Tiny Tina with her "wannabe funny" mad personality and the missions related. At this point the fun was almost a sweet memory, when during a new mission in a desert area luckily a new ride has been made available, a sort of bandit off road, with which was incredibly fun to hunt for bandits and other creatures. Driving and shooting with that damn vehicle has been a breathe of fresh air, and it helped me to go on through the game for some more missions and hours.
Anyway, at a certain point I realized that although the game had some good ideas and features, I wasn't having fun as I had expected. My interest was slowly dieing, until I finally decided to uninstall the game and return to some older but more satisfying games.

At this point here is what's good in Borderlands 2:
- more populated environments and cities
- characters are slightly better animated than in BL1
- Graphics are cool, physics effects are fairly cool,
- Claptrap is always a funny little egocentric robot
- driving is much more fun than in the first episode

And here is the bad:
- totally idiotic humor
- pathetic voice acting of the enemies
- maps are narrower, many are very linear
- no more gore, censored to the minimum
- enemies hardly drop the weapons they are using
- inventory has been quite reduced for an unknown reason
- missions at same level have quite variable difficulty, from extremely easy to plain frustrating
- guns are really similar to each other if considered in the same brand
- good weapons are extremely rare,
- there aren't innovations of any kind, the game is simply more of the same.

ERRATA CORRIGE: after 60+ hours of gameplay experience, I admit I had not explored every map available in the game yet, so to be honest I must say that there are both narrow and linear maps, AND large ones with different approach possibilites.
The game itself looks to me richer and funnier to play, even if many flaws still remain. I've corrected my score to a good 7.5. This game is good and deserves do be played. I was wrong in jugding it before a more extensive dig into it. Even the story has some surprises that are really enjoyable.