Prior to the Release of Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary, I’d would have never have guessed that a game with a Sequel that has been out for over 6 years would be getting DLC. But really how good was it?
Once starting this DLC, in you’ll be greeted with a warning that you should complete the Main story of the Base game, before playing the DLC. While the other DLC of all Borderlands games assumes that you did complete the base game, but outside of a few returning characters that you should have meet during the story most of previous DLC doesn’t really pickup any major Story point of the game. Commander Lilith revisits places and story points from the finale of base game. Help drive this point in, DLC starts art Level 30 for the weakest enemy, which is level of the base games’s Final boss, and goes up to 38, all on the “Easiest” setting.
This DLC start with you failing to Defend the Main Story’s hub area Sanctuary, from Zombie like Creatures and plants, from under the command of Colonel Hector. Sanctuary is a old Space Ship with a City built on top of it, currently flying over the planet of Pandora. As the Ship/city is under attack, it’s your job to get take down what you can.. Sadly the Plants over run the city, and Lilith, a Siren, uses her magical powers to teleport everyone to the ground and in to relative safety.
We soon meet Vaughn, a former Hyperion Accountant, from the Tales of the Borderlands game. He lets the player with Lilith and several of the people of Sanctuary use the place as temporary base.
Soon after this you start working on trying to retake Sanctuary, getting help from from the other people of Sanctuary and a few other people. As for if they do it or not? You’d have to play the game.
In Borderlands 2, we don’t see Lilith show her skills as a “leader” of Crimson Raiders, who are based Sanctuary. The leadership role was Roland, until his death, but due to being kidnapped around the same time, she couldn’t really do anything until the post game. While she acted like the leader, the few appearances, but it was more of a blink and miss it mode. As in the 9 other Story based DLC, Lilith is not seen or heard, or she was not in a situation that call upon her leadership abilities. In the Pre-Sequel, it ended up showing her understandable anger with certain group more than her being a level headed leader of the Crimson Raiders.
Another Character, “Tiny” Tina also got to stretch her limits. For the in Previous appearances of the game, she didn’t try to physically help the player, she often was a Quest giver and a voice on the Radio, and was never seen out side of her “safe” areas. The Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep DLC offered us a chance to help her comes to terms with the Death of Roland, while we as played in her D&D-style game. This time she begged Lilith to user her Magic powers to transport Tina to certain Area, and even go take point on a side missions with other characters in the game. This is partly to set her and those characters up for upcoming Borderlands 3.
Gameplay wise, there is nothing outside the normal for a Borderlands 2 player, It feels like game you played to death then finding an area that you didn’t knew exist.
As this is the last DLC for Borderlands 2, they didn’t have the the need to show off tech, mostly as most game developers has moved on to UE4 engine over UE3 engine used to make this game. Most of the games and DLC did something new that wasn’t done with the engine or within Borderlands as a series. Given that Unreal Engine 3 used to make the game was already mature by 2012, it was mostly to take advantage of Tech that could be added to the engine. As with the DLC, most of the “PhysX” effects that littered the PC version of base game, was limited, usually to pre-exiting assets.
As most of the Borderlands 2 playable characters are not due to return in Borderlands 3, the Voice Actors where not on hand to record new lines. So the player characters didn’t get new voice lines, nor did they speak outside of the standard response lines that they had in the base game (or in their DLC packs for DLC characters Gaige & Kreig). However, one voice actor did change for a minor character, it is quite noticeable, especially when base game has the Original Voice actors lines.
TL;DR
If you’re fan of Borderlands, I’d say buy it. The story and a few missions are long enough to hold you over until Borderlands 3 is released. The extra levels to 80 won’t matter to the Casual Market, but the hardcore players have more area to play in and more challenges and gear to get.
Review Note: At the time of writing, the DLC is free for any owner of Borderlands 2 (or Borderlands: The Handsome Collection) for PC, PS4 and Xbox One until July 8th 2019. I obtain my copies of the DLC with with this free promotional offer. However, I did buy the PC Base game and Season Pass back in 2012 with my own money, and all the other DLC over the years. I also purchased the PS3, and PSVita versions of Borderlands and the PS4 version of The Handsome Collection.