When comparing Borderlands: The Handsome Collection vs Grim Dawn, the Slant community recommends Grim Dawn for most people. In the question“What are the best PC RPGs?” Grim Dawn is ranked 21st while Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is ranked 42nd. The most important reason people chose Grim Dawn is:
Basically you choose 1 class and select skills as you level up. At level 10 you can select a second class, which already gives you 5x5=25 character type possibilities. Each character has dozens of skills, plus you have this additional passive skill tree that you unlock through cleansing shrines. Then there is item customization with crafted "modifiers", adding additional unique stats and skills that you can use, all this adds literally to thousands / millions of character possibilities. Do you want to use a double weapon shooting lightning bolts? You can do that. Do you want to summon your creatures and support them with fireballs? You can do that as well, you can push it wherever you want.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Awesome co-op experience
Borderlands is a lot more fun when you play it together with your friends. It's not just due to the excitement of going on an adventure together, it's also because the teamwork feels rewarding and meaningful.
The various characters and guns have their strengths and weaknesses, so you can cover for each others weaknesses. It creates an experience where you learn to rely on each other and forge a stronger bond as a result.
Pro Exciting loot collection
Every time you kill an enemy or open a chest an item can drop. There are millions of possible combinations, each with their unique appearances and stats, so you never know what you'll get. It can be a really weak but rainbow-colored rifle, or an exceptionally powerful golden shotgun. The potential to find the best loot in the most humble locations makes killing enemies and finding chests incredibly exciting and satisfying.
Pro Great variety of character classes
Both games in the collection have 6 character classes (12 total). Each one has unique abilities that are affected by the skill trees, allowing you to further specialize your character to suit your playstyle. You can choose the support skills to help your teammates, defensive skills if you like being in the middle of the action, or offensive skills to quickly destroy enemies at the cost of increased risk. There's enough variety to keep it fresh across multiple playthroughs of two very similar games.
Pro Really good value for its price
The Handsome Collection contains Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: TPS with all of their DLC included, which gives you more than 100 hours of exciting content. Before this collection was released you'd have to spend more than $100 to get all the DLC for these 2 games.
Pro Complex leveling system with thousands of possible builds
Basically you choose 1 class and select skills as you level up. At level 10 you can select a second class, which already gives you 5x5=25 character type possibilities.
Each character has dozens of skills, plus you have this additional passive skill tree that you unlock through cleansing shrines. Then there is item customization with crafted "modifiers", adding additional unique stats and skills that you can use, all this adds literally to thousands / millions of character possibilities.
Do you want to use a double weapon shooting lightning bolts? You can do that. Do you want to summon your creatures and support them with fireballs? You can do that as well, you can push it wherever you want.
Pro Great homage to old school ARPGs
This game is very dark, and grim. It harkens back to games like Diablo 2 or Titans Quest. While other ARPGs have come out since then, none have hit all the marks of what fans of the genre have been asking for. For those that wish for an updated version of Diablo 2, Grim Dawn is the game for them.
Pro Exploration
Pro Highly modifiable
Relevant in modern gaming because the community can keep products like this fresh and varied, even if the developers eventually decide to slow down their updates (which they have not!). The possibilities are great with modding, while the experiences in Diablo 3 and Path of exile are a lot more static.
Pro Drop-in co-op (online and local)
Co-op is pretty convenient as players can drop in and out of your gaming session at any time. This way there is no wasted time jumping out of ones game in order to find players to play with.
Cons
Con You can't change splitscreen settings in Borderlands: TPS
The screen is split vertically when you play 2 player coop, creating massive blindspots on the sides. This is really inconvenient when playing FPS games since you won't see enemies trying to flank you.
Con Can get repetitive over long play sessions
The gameplay is very simple at its core - you get a new mission, shoot/beat up everyone, loot items, rinse, and repeat. After doing this multiple times it can start feeling a bit dull, especially at the lower levels when your character doesn't have many abilities unlocked to keep it interesting. It might be better to stick to short play sessions, which could prevent you from burning out.
Con Only some builds are fun
There is a definite meta, with superefficient vs non-viable builds.
It's easy to mess up a build, and attribute and spec-bar points are non-respeccable (you can use a cheat editor, but devs want you to reroll a new char).
Con Difficult to move when fighting, especially when you are ranged
Con Static pre-rendered levels
This may cut down on replayability a bit as all the levels in the game are pre-rendered, meaning that each playthrough will have the exact same layout, making for something that can get tiring and too familiar. Similar games have gone with randomized levels, which can keep the game fresh. While Grim Dawn is meant to be a throwback to earlier games in the genre, some newer features found in more recent released would have been welcome.
Con Lots of trips to town
The majority of loot in the game can be useless, with odd stat restrictions or repeats of vendor items. This means the user will need to make many trips into town to sell it all off in order to have room for even more loot they will not necessarily need.