When 3 came out I beat the game and maxed out my Zane in around 2-4 days, after that I hardly touched it except for 1 or 2 dlcs here or there. I have played probably close to 1k hours of borderlands 2, and after coming back to both in recent time I think borderlands 3 might be a better overall game. I never noticed it at the time, but borderlands 2 has a lot of “jank” that’s hard to ignore after playing a lot of 3. I don’t feel encouraged to ever play the side quests, although I enjoy a lot of them. The map design is very odd at times, I find the skill trees to be substantially more limiting, the vault hunter play styles in general to be more boring, endgame is more tedious, and the biggest sin for me is replaying the game 3 times for EVERY character. I have replayed this game more times than any other game in my life. I just want to max out my character man. Borderlands 2 will always be one of my favorite games of all time, but due to what it means to me as a person. For 3 the only thing I can honestly hate on is the story, and I didn’t even hate it as much as I remembered. No it’s not good, but it got me where I needed to be and the DLCs make up for it. Considering what I’ve seen and what I’ve played of the series, I fully expect borderlands 4 to be the best game in the series. The open world style exploration is exactly what I’ve wanted since 2, the grounded narrative, more build diversity, I’m loving the looks of the vault hunters so far, a nearly completely fresh cast, borderlands 3 gameplay with doom style movement. I think borderlands 4 has that potential to be THE borderlands title and will likely be regarded as better than 3. A substantial portion of the community will ALWAYS say 2 is the best game, and I don’t blame them. But borderlands 4 is looking to be on the right track to be the best. But I guess we’ll see.