Borderlands

Borderlands is like that first sip of an energy drink before a marathon of madness. You think, "Oh, a shooter with cartoony graphics, no big deal." And then it hits you: psychos with axes, monster trucks, guns that scream when they fire, and a plot that feels like it was written by someone high on penguin action movies. And that's just the beginning! With each sequel, the insanity grows like a snowball rolling down a hill drenched in gasoline and set on fire by a rocket launcher.
The DLCs for the first game are like training for the apocalypse. There's even a storyline where they practically send you to the Moon because, well, why the hell not? Borderlands is the starting point of a world where logic taps out after the first two minutes, and you're left holding a gun with a crooked grin on your face. And you know what? It's a damn good time.

The original version of Borderlands Game of the Year is rough around the edges and harder than its remastered counterpart, but it is one of the first role-playing first-person shooters to introduce the "looter shooter" sub-genre.
With a great soundtrack, narrative, dialogue, and humour makes Borderlands GOTY really a must player for any gamer.

This review is based on 100% completion and 70.7 hours of gameplay.
Recommendation:
Would I recommend this game? Yes, I would. I have a huge nostalgic attachment to this game, so I admit I’m a bit biased, but even after all these years, the game still holds up well and is where the Borderlands franchise all started. It's definitely worth picking up and giving it a try.
While the game does feel a bit dated, especially in terms of gameplay and mechanics, the art style still looks great even by today's standards. If you're coming from more modern games, you'll notice that the mechanics feel a little outdated, but the core gameplay foundation of Borderlands remains solid.
For me, the gameplay felt good—dated but still enjoyable. The difficulty, compared to the other games, felt well balanced overall, with a few exceptions like Moxxi's DLC and bosses like Crawmerax, who are insanely difficult unless you use a glitch or have another player helping. The sound design and audio are also good. There’s less voice dialogue in this game since it relies more on MMO-style quest text, but what dialogue is there is well done. I especially loved the sound design in Moxxi's DLC—the vibes when the arena opens up are great, although the constant one-liners can get tiresome. I also had a good nostalgic laugh when I heard the Halo CE shield audio. Overall, the sound design and voice acting are solid and fit well.
Despite being an older game, Borderlands is still a great experience and worth picking up if you have the chance. Since the original edition is no longer listed on Steam, the only way I know to get it is through bundles, which often go on sale. I’d recommend waiting for a good deal, especially on the Handsome or Pandora collection bundles.
DLC:
Moxxi’s Underdome Riot: This is an arena mode, and frankly, it's not great. The difficulty is very high, especially if you don’t have good weapons or a high-level character to carry you. I hosted at level 20, and the enemies were also level 20, but without strong gear, I was getting melted. Beyond the difficulty, the mode feels hollow—no XP from killing enemies or completing rounds, no proficiency for your weapons, and the loot drops are poor. Unless you're going for 100% completion, this DLC feels like a waste of time. Each arena takes about 2-3 hours to complete and must be done in one sitting, which makes it a long, boring grind. We also encountered a significant issue on the third arena map, "The Gully." We made it to round 17, wave 1, but an enemy spawned outside the map, forcing us to leave and redo the entire run, wasting over two hours. This is a common issue, as seen in forum discussions.
The Secret Armory of General Knoxx: This is a decent piece of content that introduces Moxxi and Athena. The long highways in this DLC can be a bit tedious with little to do along the way, but it gave me Halo 3: ODST Coastal Highway vibes, which was kind of nice. The enemies can be tough, but they're manageable. Be prepared for Crawmerax, though—it’s an extremely difficult boss.
The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned: This is a fun, lighthearted DLC with more of a focus on humour and references to things outside of this IP. It was one of the more enjoyable bits of content in the game for me.
Claptrap's Robot Revolution: Like the Zombie DLC, this is another fun piece of content. It's really satisfying to finally get to shoot at claptraps!
Achievements:
DLC is required for 100%, and there are also some co-op/multiplayer achievements that will need to be completed.
If you complete this original Borderlands, good news: you can import your character into the enhanced edition, which carries over 30 of the 80 achievements, including the notoriously difficult Moxxi’s Underdome Riot achievements and almost all the other DLC ones. There's a steam guide by "alphabetsoup" that explains this in more detail, which you can view here.
If you're starting fresh, the main things to keep in mind are the co-op/multiplayer achievements, which will require help from another player, and the Moxxi DLC achievements, which require you to complete all three arena modes. These are no easy feat and can take 2-3 hours per arena. I recommend doing this with other players, with one hosting at a low level (I hosted at level 20) and the others at max level with good gear. Be prepared for long sessions. Thankfully, if you plan to play both the original and enhanced versions, you only need to do these achievements once, as they carry over.
The "And They'll Tell Two Friends" achievement can also be tricky, as you need to join the game of someone who already has the achievement. This might require some effort to find someone in the forums but there are a lot of people who like to help.
For the co-op achievements, such as completing 15 missions and killing bosses, you can solo them if you don't mind using a third-party application to trick the game into thinking there are more players. More details on this can be found in a guide by “Nilex”, which you can view here.
The Claptrap DLC’s collectable achievements are another challenge. This is a long grind, and since it relies heavily on RNG, everyone's experience will vary. In my case, it took me around 10 hours to collect everything. Unfortunately, even when you've completed one set of collectables, they still drop, making it more frustrating. Stick with it, though, and you'll get there.
The rest of the achievements are fairly standard for Borderlands and can be completed with some grinding.

For 100% achievement hunters, there are some terrible collectible achievements - pizzas and oil cans primarily. You receive nothing but achievements for these, and you will need to kill thousands of claptraps.
Otherwise, I really enjoyed the game. Called a looter shooter, but it has a lot in common with first person, gun-based RPGs (Fallout 3, 4, 76, and New Vegas). BL is funnier though.

This game is too old, thats what i thought at least. I genuinely did not even know that Original Borderlands existed on steam. After giving Borderlands 2 at least 4th try and finally enjoying it, i decided to completely go through all the series that borderlands has to offer.
The game is extremely simple, there is also hardly any story. The entire game, you are looking for the vault keys, you collect them and then it opens. That is pretty much the whole thing. Now, obviously, there are some parts, where some characters interfere and some that suggest to aid you in the journey. Missions are as simple, you have to go to a certain place, kill something, turn it in, get EXP, repeat. It was rather difficult for me to distinguish main missions from side missions, because there are no specific marks, which notify you of the fact that you are currently on the path of the main quest, so... i got up and did all the missions. Turns out, i had to do them anyway, otherwise the final boss would have been impossible to defeat (Final boss was a bit boring).
Gunplay is great, there are variety of weapons at your disposal along with their different types of elements. They sound great, feel great, look good and all that. Few issues i had, accuracy is horrible. Even if my crosshair is at the enemy's head, it still misses. During my last mission, i obtained an yellow sniper riffle, which dealt a lot of damage, but the accuracy was so bad that i was missing 8 shots out of 10 despite having an enemy in my sight. Another thing, Rocket launchers are absolutely horrible. Sure, if they have elemental damage such as fire and you hit it to someone, the fire keeps on deteriorating the HP of the hit enemy. However, i am too used to RPG dealing a lot of damage on impact rather than gradually lowering the health. Imagine, you shoot an RPG and it deals 20 damage, but inflicts fire and the health gradually deteriorates. it might take up to a minute to kill an enemy like that.
Dialogues are hardly ever used, actually. I was hoping to hear a lot, but most of the time, you have to read the missions, which was not a problem necessarily. Although voices were really well done.
Despite the game being almost 17 years old, it still holds up really well. I personally did not have any issues with it or the gameplay. Some minor inconvenience was my fps being locked at 60 and i could not do anything about it. However, there are a lot of issues with the Enhanced Edition. Framerate is low, it often lags, crashes, settings and graphics are pretty much the same. It comes with a lot of issues and is simply not worth it. two positives, which i have seen in the Enhanced version, were the map and auto-pickup.
I still have not played any DLCs just yet, but have started with claptrap. I heard a lot of good things about it and im sure it will not disappoint. The main game was not boring for me either. I enjoyed the RPG elements of it. It was repetitive indeed, but in a good way.
I believe, it costs 2$s on a sale and comes with EVERYTHING. Even without a sale, it is worth it. With all the DLCs in mind, you get around 40 to 50 hours of gameplay. I highly recommend it, since it deploys the fundamental idea of what borderland is all about.

The OG FPS looter. If you like modding, DON'T play the Enhanced Edition, play this instead.

Despite all its flaws it's still my favourite Borderlands game.
I honestly can't think of anything positive to say, I grew up with this game so it might just be my comfort game.
This game has achievements that require you to put in over 8 hours of uninterrupted real world time without being allowed to save.
DO NOT PLAY THE ENHANCED VERSION
It's laggy, buggy and adds unnecessary changes that take away from the original experience imo