May 2020 Edit: Borderlands 3 earns an additional point for it's outstanding post launch support. It's quality and frequency of updates are overall very good. These include: It's 15$ side story DLCs all 4 of which are more entertaining and pleasent compared to the main story; It's free events, raids and raid bosses, new missions, gameplay fixes, general content updates, weapon and skill buffs, level cap increases, limited time items, and of course a huge variety of new legendarys with some very clever and interesting new unique effects; Then there's whole new game features such as new skill trees giving basically 33% more versatility to each character, new item machines, an aniontment re roll option, new mayhem modes, the arms race game mode, that borderlands science thing, ect. This is on top of a game that already came out with a solid wealth of content.
The only minor thing I'm disappointed with is the character updates. Borderlands 2 and PS had two DLC vault hunters, this game has none. While especially with the 4th skill trees the BL3 VHs have better variety than the BL2 VHs, they have all played pretty much the same since launch. If they can introduce another more exotic skill tree for each character and easier than that start doing new things with class mods, that I believe would make up for having only 4 characters. Still a pretty small complaint. This game has reached a whole new level of GUN P*RN. Well done devs, honestly.
Review at release (8/10):
Borderlands 2 was big leap forward from BL1 in story AND gameplay. Borderlands 3 is a step up ONLY in gameplay. Borderlands 3 is probably the most satisfying and punchy feeling FPS's I've ever played. With 4 different classes, tons of creative abilities, and an insane variety of core weapons along with legendaries with unique and goofy effects, the game is pretty much flawlessly executed in terms of being a fun first person shooter.
Unfortunately BL3 clearly has lost most of it's writing talent from it's predecessor over the 7 years in between the games. The story is coherent enough, but it's held back by a pair of bad villians who you don't want to kill as much as you want them to shut up. Many old characters either don't return or are left out. I was esspecally disappointed that you only get to hang out with "The B team" (Mordicai, Brick, and Tiny Tina) at one minor point in the story. New characters are a mixed bag, but one negative highlight was Ava, a petualant and annoying pre-teen who is given way too much power and screen time for no reason. It's sucks they couldn't stike the right balance between good old and new characters like BL2 did.
It's disappointing Gearbox could not follow up to one of my top 5 all time games with a better story, but it's hard to be mad when pretty much everything else is a slam dunk. Btw endgame is also superb, unless you're a raid boss fan.
