On June 25, the latest story of Borderlands 3, DLC "Blood Darts", was officially unbanned. After seeing the luxury casino and the Cthulhu wedding, Ben DLC pulled the game stage to the west. So what kind of adventure will the Vault Hunter face this time?
*As of June 18, my Blood Dart game lasts around 5 hours, completes all main and side quests in the DLC, and doesn't deliberately look for collectibles
The character is a self-use level 57 blood explosion stream gunner, and the game difficulty is "Chaos Level 2"
In reviewing the first DLC of Borderlands 3, we have said that when evaluating the large DLC of Borderlands, the focus is often on the new stories, new characters, and new scenes it brings, and whether all three of them can serve the theme of the entire DLC. As the latest DLC's Bloodsaver, I think it does have some ideas in this regard, but the final result is only barely satisfactory.
In Bloodspring, players set foot on the desolate frontier planet Hell star to help the sheriff of the local town maintain law and order and solve some incidents for the residents. However, after the evil gang "Ghost Rider" riding the beast appears, the player decides to fight bravely and help the locals fight against this evil gang.
I believe that friends who pay attention to this DLC can see that the theme of "Blood Dart" is the "West" that is eager to write on the face. The game has done a lot of work to strengthen and highlight this theme. For example, the font used when loading a DLC map has a strong western style:
For example, the cutscenes and scripts in the game have performed "Cowboy Showdown" many times:
Another example is the scene of the game, where the player will start by falling into a wasteland with cacti and tumbleweed, and then arrive in a town with standard buildings such as taverns, banks and hotels, as well as a certain Japanese style, and there will be bounty wanted notices posted or scattered around.
Music is a rare highlight of this DLC, the kind of lonely and melodious, and a hint of wild concert that rings in the player's ears at the right time, and when the player is caught in battle, the fast-paced, crazy Western movie-style soundtrack will also be enjoyed by the player.
In addition to the sound and painting aspects, Blood Dart also enhances the gameplay experience of the collection part. In addition to the traditional collection method, the game also provides "treasure map treasure hunt" and "bounty hunting" and other western characteristics of the content, for players willing to immerse themselves in it can provide a very good experience.
As for the nonsense of the character lines and Chinese text, it has maintained a consistently high standard, players will definitely smile at the terrier hidden in the game's lines during the process of tackling the problem, and the localized content of the text without any castration allows Chinese players to experience the unique cold humor of "Borderlands" in an almost barrier-free way.
The above content represents the efforts made by "Blood Dart" to the western theme. But if you look at it, you should realize that I missed something very important - that is, the core of the story DLC, which is its main line side quest experience.
I have to say, not quite.
I think there are two kinds of good DLC in the Borderlands series, one is a fantasy genre that is close to reality, and the other is a realistic theme that is close to fantasy. "Dragon Castle Adventure" belongs to the former, and "Scarlett's Treasure" belongs to the latter.
In the former, the game will provide a huge fantasy world with little basis in reality (little Tina's running group world), in which the player will use a seemingly nonsensical but actually reasonable way to tackle the problem (the rules of little Tina are observed during the running group, and the development along the way is actually not much different from our real feeling of playing the running group);
In the latter, the game will use a world that everyone is relatively familiar with and knows the basic rules (in a desert oasis town that is somewhat close to reality), in which the player will unfold the plot in an almost unbelievable way (send a letter to the uncle who is alone in the cliffside hut, then the uncle is killed by the object of unrequited love, and finally the protagonist runs to leviathan to fight the monster).
That is to say, finding a balance between fantasy and reality, making the mission flow and plot unfold both unexpected and self-justifying, is the core charm of Borderlands.
Although "Blood Dart" has made efforts to the western theme, involving classic western elements such as "selling fake drugs" and "grazing", its main line side quest experience can only be said to be "skinning". There are almost no bridges in the DLC that impress me, and the unfolding of the plot is completely unexpected, even cheesy; the game tries to use "narration" to give the player the feeling of "experiencing the western story", but this narration is really just a narration, no buried stems, no interesting small paragraphs, he is just telling what is happening or the background of the characters, which is disappointing.
This makes Bloodsucker a little-appealing DLC that may be a small snack for Borderlands players who prefer a western theme, but the mediocrity of the core content gives it the embarrassing position of being tasteless and abandoned. It gives you around 5 hours of new content experience, and with the blessing of quality localization, you may be able to smile as you go through a mission, and then, there is no more.
In terms of the mechanics of the game itself, the upper limit of the character level of the Blood Darts version will be increased to 60 levels, and players have a few more skill points to play; the new weapons are mainly revolvers, that is, various new guns of the Jacobs label, and I got a revolver that can be charged, which is very interesting.
But at the end of this review, let's briefly talk about the overall state of Borderlands 3 – I think it's a bit bad.
Borderlands is a series of games I personally love and one of my longest-running game series, Borderlands 2 has been with me for hundreds of hours of fun. But now Borderlands 3, whether it's the enhanced/weakened balance adjustments or the update of the difficulty mechanics, makes me feel "confused".
"Chaos" here is pejorative. Although the Endgame content provided by the body at the time of release is insufficient, everyone can still find their own way to have fun (well, agents may not be so happy). And after a few updates and adjustments, my Moser became a low-output and untenable waster. The anti-aircraft gun + hexagonal infinite grenade stream was indeed too strong before, but I don't think there is really any need for the official to completely cut this genre.
On the other hand, some of the new equipment for the event/update is too powerful, with agents who "witness death" sitting directly from the sewers to the altar. "Unforgivable" even to the point of "don't care what profession has this gun and you are God". This situation of not having to think about the passive build of class skills and equipment kills the core fun of Borderlands.
As for the redo of Chaos mode and the chicken pecking rice level cap update... I can understand that developers want to keep players for a long time, so by setting challenges high enough and ceiling lifts frequently enough, players are encouraged to keep brushing. But now the situation is: after the update, the old equipment can not beat the new enemy → reduce the chaos level in order to fight the new enemy → the chaos level is reduced, the equipment drop rate is lowered, the → The new equipment takes shape slowly, the old equipment cannot beat... And so on.
Of course, even with these complaints, Borderlands 3 is still that special game. And although the 3 DLCs that have been released so far have not yet made my eyes shine, it is not bad to experience a new story for a while. At the same time, I would like to believe that the next DLC of Borderlands 3 will be better.