For instance your Assassin might be focused on sniping and avoiding damage, while mine could be tailored to get in close and melee enemies while taking it on the chin. But how those abilities and characters function can be tailored to your playstyle (and can be changed over and over again for a negligible fee on a whim). No matter what, every Commando will be about using turrets, every Gunzerker about raging out and blasting people with two weapons at once, every Siren about using a stun ability called Phase Lock, and every Assassin about temporarily cloaking and unleashing devastating surprise attacks. Unlike the original, though, a lot of options have been added to the skill trees to make it possible to create much more diverse builds.at least to a point. Like the first game, Borderlands 2’s four classes each have a unique ability. However, when it comes to class skill customization, Borderlands 2 is heading in the right direction. Seeing as how Borderlands 2 takes cues from numerous RPGs, I still find myself disappointed with the lack of visual customization options (Borderlands 2 features the ability to reskin your character, but only with blanket skins that change the look of their body and their head). It keeps things from dragging, and drives you rapidly onward in the never-ending quest for loot.
You roll in, you kill anything that looks at you the wrong way, and then you walk around and look at items, utilizing the handy on-screen comparison tools to see if you’ve found something at all better than what you’re already holding. While many guns operate similarly to one another, the stats and augmentations are just complex enough to create a seemingly endless number of combinations, without being so diverse that they’re hard to understand at a glance. You simply have to decide the best - or most entertaining - way to kill everyone. Thankfully, snappy shooting and lots of environmental hazards combine with each class’s unique ability to turn every skirmish into a playground. No matter the quest, at some point something or someone is getting pounded with lead. Guns really do make up the bulk of the loot, and that’s great because you’re going to spend most of your time in Borderlands 2 staring down a gun sight. Every firefight and intense boss battle becomes all the more rewarding, because, though you might die a few times and want to crush something near you in real life, it suddenly feels like everything is going to be OK when you’re blasting away enemies with a newly looted gun. Just like Diablo or a number of other action RPGs, the hunt for loot becomes intoxicating because of the tiny rush you get each time a rare colored item spills out of a chest or is dropped by a recently slain enemy.
Guns, ammo, character skins, grenade mods, class mods - there’s always something just a bit better, something you so desperately didn’t even know you needed until you found it in Borderlands 2. The hook of Borderlands 2, the very reason that I found myself thinking about it when I worked or tried to fall asleep, is the loot. If you’ve been itching for a reason to jump back into the world of Pandora, Borderlands 2 provides a more than ample supply. A few relatively minor complaints aside, Borderlands 2 improves not only the narrative, but almost every major game system. When you’ve managed to create an unexpectedly great first entry for a franchise, it begs the question: What the hell do you do with the sequel? In the case of Borderlands 2 developer Gearbox has decided to largely stick with what worked the first time around, while implementing a host of tweaks that make it an overall superior game.