For those thinking it would be easier with multiple people, it is, but not by much. This is largely due to not being able to reenter the area after starting the fight, so you literally can’t fail to second wind / revive or you will need to win without that persons help. Even if you can get back up, you will start with reduced life, due to a new effect added with these bosses. All of this certainly adds to the annoyances of this fight, but nothing is more annoying than the lock out. For those who didn’t hear about this, you can now only kill these bosses once per day, so you either need to wait a day or set your clock ahead a day. Needless to say, it’s extremely annoying, especially since 1 person will prevent a party from starting the fight with that person in the room.
Seraph Items Suck
Similar to General Knoxx, Captain Scarlett adds a new item rarity known as seraph, which can only be obtained by spending seraph crystals or having one drop. Since you most likely won’t have one drop, you’re forced to farm crystals, which only seem to drop from raid bosses, though Hyperius is the only reliable source for crystals. On average they drop 8 – 12, but you need 50 – 120 to buy any seraph item. However, the items are simply not worth the effort or hassle to obtain. Besides the fact that most legendary weapons are better, seraph appears to be legendary ETech (Magenta) items. Some of these items, much like the pirate items, also have unwanted effects.
Out of all the items, the Blood of the Seraphs easily has the worst effect. This relic grants you both health regen (over 1%) and additional HP (over 20%), but the stats change every time you equip or load your game. On the pirate side you have cursed (blue text) items that offer something great, in exchange for a trade off. The amazing shotgun does damage to you whenever you shoot, the grenade shoots little grenades back at you, etc. Unfortunately, I can’t see any practical use for any of these items past making the game harder to play. I mean it was cool idea, but they’re not broken to the point they need these absurd tradeoffs.
Very Short
Before Captain Scarlett was released, it was said to have a 8 – 10 hour playtime. However, it’s actually a lot closer to 4 hours if you don’t include the raid bosses. Sadly the actual story is limited to 9 missions, which shouldn’t take you more than 2 hours to complete. Upon finishing the story missions, you will have another 20 or so random ones, though most of them are just killing stuff. I believe it took me about 10 hours to do everything, but I also had to kill Master Gee several times for it to count.
VERDICT
Captain Scarlett was a good idea, but it doesn’t offer anything that is a must. This pack doesn’t give you additional storage, levels, or even items that outmatch current legendary gear. When you add this with the poorly paced story, awful raid bosses and the knowledge you can’t use the ship outside of the DLC areas, it’s hard to justify the $10 dollars for it. Ideally future DLC packs will be better, cause this one set the bar quite low.
[Editor’s Note: Borderlands 2 Captain Scarlett and her Pirates Booty DLC was reviewed on the Xbox 360 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]
David Stonecipher
October 18, 2012 at 6:48 PMSo I just tried a second playthrough of Captain Scarlett and her Pirate’s Booty on a different character tonight and I have to say, I’m surprisingly hating it. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed my first time through the new DLC either for that matter. I mostly just went through the motions, spent my time in the new themepark area, and then went back to the rest of Pandora with nothing to really show for it. I suppose you could argue that I did it for fun but, looking back, I found myself mostly bored. I guess I tricked myself into believing I was enjoying the DLC but I think I was merely wearing blinders since I’m such a huge fan of the franchise.
This is strange because I love both Borderlands and Pirates so this add-on should be right up my alley but for some reason, it simply isn’t. The characters (read Shade) are the first in Borderlands history that irritate me. I’ve always been a huge fan of the setting and the characterization in the series until this point. The raids don’t do it for me either because I’m not a fan of foes with boss mechanics (its why I like the traditional Borderlands Action of co-op play with one other person instead of simply playing an MMO). But frankly, I understand that not every aspect of a game is tailored to me so I simply don’t hold it against the DLC that they exist, its just the add-on really doesn’t have anything that I do want to do. The sand skiff is fun, but even that I don’t get to take back to the rest of Pandora and since I’m clearly not a fan of the new DLC I have no true interest to stay in maps I dislike to play around on the new vehicle.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just having my gaming menstruals and I’ll get back into it later but, for now, I’m going to give Borderlands 2 a rest for the first time since its release. I’ve only been giving other games attention because, you know, its my job. But now I think its time to find another title to steal that special place in my heart. I got an unimaginable number of hours of fun out of you Borderlands 2 so I thank you for that. But I guess its time for me to give the Eridium a rest for now.