When comparing Borderlands vs TowerFall Ascension, the Slant community recommends TowerFall Ascension for most people. In the question“What are the best 4-player local multiplayer games on Steam?” TowerFall Ascension is ranked 3rd while Borderlands is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose TowerFall Ascension is:
You run, jump, and shoot arrows, which anyone can learn in a matter of minutes. To become a great player, however, there is a lot of technique and strategy to learn. This includes aiming, using cover, reading your opponent, and many other things. As a result TowerFall Ascension is accessible to casual players while also being able to keep the hardcore players interested.
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Pros
Pro Addictive loot based gameplay
The loot in Borderlands is color coded to signal which loot is the most rare. This system of loot based collecting allows the user to always be on the hunt for more rare items, which can be addicting in the way it has been designed.
Pro Fun dungeon boss fights
Players can team up against dungeon bosses that are often large in scale and power making for fun tasks to complete that are separate from the main story tree.
Pro The character customization is great
In Borderlands, once you reach a certain level, you begin to acquire talent points. Each point can be spent in several different ways that will enhance your characters power, and there are quite a few paths to take. For example, one character can power up his melee attacks, his ability to take hits, or his explosive capabilities (specifically with rocket launchers). Of course, as you gain more levels, even if you completely fill out one of those trees, you can start to gain points in another, and your talents begin to interact in interesting ways.
Pro A great mix of first person shooter and RPG
Borderlands provides the feel of a first person shooter in the rich, story-driven world of an RPG.
Pro A great sense of humor
The entire Borderlands series takes comedy pretty seriously. More accurately, it doesn't. There's a lot of cheap, light-hearted jokes in the game that really keep you smiling while you're blowing your enemies to tiny bits.
Pro Easy to learn but hard to master
You run, jump, and shoot arrows, which anyone can learn in a matter of minutes. To become a great player, however, there is a lot of technique and strategy to learn. This includes aiming, using cover, reading your opponent, and many other things. As a result TowerFall Ascension is accessible to casual players while also being able to keep the hardcore players interested.
Pro Feels fair at any skill level
Each player only has three arrows at the beginning of a match. Once they are fired, the arrows can be picked up by anyone. This way no player can build momentum that feels oppressive, allowing even new players to control the pace of a match since they can just hog all the arrows.
Pro Single-screen levels add depth to strategy
In the style of old school games like Asteroids, everything that moves outside the edge of the screen appears on the opposite side of it. Because of this you always need to remain aware of your surroundings and other player locations, so you don't get hit by an arrow coming from an unexpected direction. This adds a level complexity not found in many modern games, which is quite refreshing.
Pro Co-op mode that improves communication
TowerFall Ascension has a 2-player co-op mode where you and your friend fight against hordes of bad guys. It has friendly fire, so you need to communicate to avoid hurting each other. This creates a mode that motivates you to communicate with your friend more, leading to a lot of back and forth banter.
Cons
Con No mini-map on screen
User will have to open the menu often in order to get their bearings as to where things are as there is no on-screen map, it is only in the menu. Having to pull up the menu so often for the map can be frustrating an immersion breaking.
Con Really short co-op campaign
The co-op quest mode takes around seven hours to complete. So if you're not interested in the competitive multiplayer aspect of TowerFall Ascension, you'll run out of things to do really fast.
Con Limited to just local multiplayer
As it is now, you're limited to just playing with or against your friends or not playing at all. If you could play matches against other players online, the game would've been a lot more accessible.