TLDR: I loved Borderlands two and I'm going to start a replay with a different character, which i almost never do.
I had fun with Borderlands 1, but was basically pushing through by the end trying not to fall asleep.
B2, on the other hand, I was very engaged in the entire ride through, although it seemed well balanced and the game ended when it should, even including the side quests.
Improvements -
The writing! I think I heard a reference to Anthony Burch writing in Borderlands 2 from hey ass. Whatcha playing episode, and he got some award?
Experience tiers, which I didn't initially like because it wasn't explained, but basically the quests are more important than farming enemies for experience, so you get much more engaged with the stories because you're following quests instead of trying to kill enough boring enemies in the same way to get high enough of a level to destroy future enemies.
In any case, the writing that I did like in Borderlands 1, was perfect in 2. Not too long, always funny, always engaging, every character very well defined, which brings me to my next point:
The voice acting was hilarious and perfect, again, very well defined and idiosyncratic for every character, just so much fun to listen to. Every time handsome Jack pops up. It's fun to listen to him be an a******.
The quests were so much more satisfying. At the end of the first game, I was basically just following marker to marker without caring what anybody said or what was written down just tapping through to the next wavepoint until the quest was finished.
In Borderlands 2, Even if I accidentally clicked through the introduction to the quest, I would go back and make sure to read because I know that the paragraph introducing and explaining the quest is funny and that the quest is going to be rescuing lab experiments and I have to find a particular valve or putting together a treasure map with a weird lure, rather than just find the bigger bad guy punch him to death.
Driving was huge - I was not into driving in Borderlands 1 and got really bored and irritated every time I had to drive. I felt like the aiming system was complete dog s***, and it was just not very fun to drive around in general, like the handling was terrible.
I loved driving around the Borderlands too and was actively bummed out whenever. I didn't get a car, but it made perfect sense and they used the car just enough so that the game wasn't too easy. But you could still boost and race around however you wanted, or chase down a beer van. So much fun driving, such a huge improvement from the first game.
Larger levels with more interesting landscapes in them, each level felt much more unique than the entire The first game to me, like each area had its own style to a degree I hadn't seen before.
I can't remember a single place from the first game, but I'm going to remember the different style of the underground bug. Bunker and the dust and all these other places that had an impact on the personality of the game.
Lastly, art is more efficient, not as many bold lines emphasizing the comic book quality, which is carried through more by the personality of the game instead of by the specific art.
Honestly I wanted so badly to like The Pre Sequel but I hated it.
The humour is significantly worse. It seems like it relies on Australian slang or something because a lot of it just didn't make sense or wasn't funny to me. They would say stuff that had the timing and tone that I recognized was supposed to be a joke, but it would just fall so flat I couldn't even tell what the joke was supposed to be.
The movement felt extremely floaty and bad. The only maps where I had any fun were the space station levels where the gravity was normal. I distinctly remember the moment I put the game down and didn't pick it back up again was when I ran out of content on the Hyperion station, and I knew that if I wanted to advance the story I needed to go back to the moon.
The level design is horrible. In BL1 and 2, I basically never got stuck in level geometry and needed to kill myself to respawn and free myself. But I needed to do this like once every hour or two in TPS. And I only died to falling into death pits rarely in the prior games, while it was probably the number 1 cause of death for me in TPS.
All that being said, I do like the character building and the story of Handsome Jack's rise to power.
I wouldn't say the humor replies on Australian slang (outside of a couple sidequests), it's just not funny. That being said, you could try the DLC which takes place in claptrap's brain and thus doesn't have any space australians.
I get what you're saying about the floatiness, but I liked it as a gimmick with the air boosting.
Okay, phew. I was worried I just didn't get the jokes or something.
If it had been for a few smaller sections it'd have been more tolerable. Like how some games use water levels or low gravity levels as like a bonus area. It should not have been the game's whole schtick.
I found the maps to just be too big. Doing many of the story and side missions are an absolute chore (the Bosun's ship in particular was a low point in this respect) because of how much running you have to do. At least in 2 the maps were filled with things to do and had varied environments that kept things from feeling same-y. I've beaten 2 many times, but never felt the urge to replay TPS. The game just feels like a slog.
I found it funny as someone from the US. I think there were only a couple of things that relied so heavily on Australian slang.
I also don't recall ever getting stuck in level geometry.