Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty

While I have little to no complaints about the gameplay as its solid as always, I have to say this is a rather silly campaign as we have our heroes interacting with a pirate lady who is such a stereotype of a Twitter user that is gets cringey at times. Thankfully this was clearly meant to be satire which just leaves this as unfunny commentary of modern internet culture rather than awful writing meant to be taken seriously (the no fatties’ diatribe is particularly painful regardless.) The idea of being a pirate on Pandora is pretty sensible all things considered and there was a clear attempt at mocking the fake gamers who only join the community to shove their agendas into everyone's faces, but I honestly wouldn’t mind if we never heard from captain scarlet ever again.

A pretty solid DLC that mirrors the quality of the base game quite well, for better or for worse. The Vault Hunters explore the Oasis, a vast desert, riding what are basically Tatooine speeders to get from place to place, go spelunking for treasure, shoot up pirates, and find the lost treasure of Blackbeard... or something.

Like in BL2, the writing is well below average, including an entire series of missions with a character whose only trait is being a sex pest and harasser. Scarlett herself sees very little characterization for the name associated with the content, and she does this annoying meta thing where she knows that she seems suspicious so she just transparently (and semi-ironically) says all of the betrayal she's gonna do to you up front. It's really lazy and tiresome, especially after a 25 hour base game experience just like it. The DLC does have its humorous moments though, like a few quests for C3NS0RB07, a loader hellbent on destroying all impure things in the desert even if it means a bunch of murder to do it.

The enemies are standard affair with a couple of exceptions that are interesting, like the Cursed Pirate who attacks like a Psycho but gets massive health regen if he hits you, or the Anchormen who swing dual chained anchors from their arms like Kratos or something. The bosses are a bit underwhelming but the utterly fantastic visual design of the desert, its hidden lagoons and caves, the dilapidated towns, and its gigantic landmarks like the Magnys Lighthouse and the gigantic crashed ship atop The Rustyards. The sunbaked oranges and yellows of the desert are contrasted with vibrant teal waters and colorful architecture. Add in a healthy bit of Monkey Island references and pirate atmosphere to everything and you have a generally winning formula for your setting.

At this point, this was the best Borderlands DLC to date, and it did so fairly effortlessly. You can now actually fast travel between DLC locations, for one! Although its ending is a bit weird, I'd still easily recommend playing the pack if you liked the base game at all - it bats at the same average.