Borderlands 2

A decade and a half after release, Borderlands 2 remains one of the clearest reference points for the entire looter-shooter genre, and the review sample makes clear why: a small number of reviewers here report playtimes running into the hundreds of thousands of minutes, still calling it their favorite game. Gearbox's sequel refines the original's cel-shaded, wasteland-satire formula around Pandora and its endless supply of procedurally generated guns, shields and grenade mods, wrapped around a story that leans harder into character writing than its predecessor did.

A loop that still holds up, especially with friends

The core appeal here is exactly what made the series' reputation, and reviewers describe it in specific, personal terms. One reviewer, framing their review explicitly for newcomers, lays out the game's real dependency on co-op directly: "if you want to get the fullest essence of this game then play with suitable co-op partner(s)," noting that solo play can feel comparatively "boring" in stretches, while a full four-player group changes not just pacing but strategy, since reviving downed teammates and covering each other during reloads meaningfully reduces the frustration of the game's harder, "hard-core" difficulty spikes. A separate detailed, structured review scores the game 9.5 out of 10 overall, specifically praising its story, characters and co-op experience as genre standouts, while still grading its now-dated visual presentation more modestly at 8 out of 10.

A specific, actionable value tip

One of the most heavily upvoted reviews in this entire sample isn't really about the game's quality at all — it's a direct, practical purchasing recommendation. "DO NOT BUY THE BASE BORDERLANDS 2 GAME," the review states, laying out that the Handsome Collection bundle — which adds every piece of Borderlands 2 DLC plus the entire Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel game and its own DLC — has historically cost barely more than a dollar above this standalone listing during sales, for what the reviewer calculates as "more than 90%" in total savings relative to buying everything separately. That's a specific, checkable claim rather than a vague nudge toward a sale, and it's worth verifying against current pricing before buying this base listing outright.

A 2025 review-bombing wave tied to a publisher-wide policy change

Much like this reviewer's parallel finding on BioShock Infinite, Borderlands 2's negative reviews are dominated by a large, clustered wave of complaints from March through June 2025 objecting to a Take-Two terms-of-service update that reviewers describe as covering mods, bug/exploit disclosure, forced arbitration, and broader data-collection concerns across the publisher's entire catalogue — not anything unique to this specific game. One reviewer with over 800 upvotes calls it "disgusting" that the update "cuts off already existing users from enjoying the game they paid for." This is a real, well-corroborated controversy worth flagging clearly, in the same way the launcher issue was worth flagging on BioShock Infinite, though checking the most recent reviews available from September 2026 turns up no fresh mentions of it at all — suggesting the acute wave of complaints has passed, even though this review can't independently confirm whether the underlying terms themselves have changed since.

Learning curve, and a specific co-op bug worth knowing about

Beyond the bigger-picture findings, a few more specific, concrete data points are worth passing along. New players unfamiliar with the series report a real learning curve around the loot and level-scaling systems, with one reviewer describing being under-leveled for a given area as turning the game into something close to "torture" until gear catches up. Separately, a recent review reports a specific, reproducible co-op bug: getting disconnected from their party and rerouted to their own solo instance upon entering a mid-game boss encounter, a concrete technical complaint distinct from the broader terms-of-service noise dominating the page.

What the completion data adds

Steam's achievement statistics offer a rough independent check on how far the average buyer actually gets. Early milestones sit close to 90% of the tracked playerbase, but that figure falls away sharply, with the hardest tracked achievements sitting in the low single digits — a curve consistent with a game that a large share of buyers dip into but a much smaller share push through to its toughest end-game content. As with several other older Steam catalogue titles, this game's achievement schema returns only generic internal names rather than readable descriptions, so this review can describe the general shape of that drop-off without being able to tie it to specific campaign milestones or end-game modes.

A franchise that's still very much alive

Worth noting for context: Borderlands 2 isn't a relic reviewers are looking back on in isolation. The series continued with Borderlands 3 and a since-teased fourth entry, and several reviewers in this sample frame their praise for this specific game explicitly in terms of where it sits in that larger lineage — regularly cited as either the series' peak or a close second to Borderlands 3 depending on individual taste, with the villain here singled out repeatedly as a high point the later games are still measured against. That ongoing relevance is part of why the review base remains this large and this active well over a decade after the game's original release, rather than the game having faded into pure nostalgia territory.

Where it lands

Borderlands 2 earns its status as a genre landmark through a loot loop and co-op experience that reviewers with genuinely extraordinary playtimes still return to more than a decade on, backed by writing reviewers consistently single out as a series high point. The specific, practical bundle recommendation is worth acting on directly before buying this listing, and the 2025 terms-of-service controversy is real and corroborated enough to note clearly, even as the most recent reviews suggest the acute backlash has cooled. For co-op groups especially, this remains close to essential.