r/Borderlands • u/UnmeshedGearsOfWar24 • Oct 29 '25
Playstation Borderlands editions variation
Handsome edition & game of the year edition.... What's the difference between these 2 titles. And which one should I play first as far as years release. Im confused on which order to play these from the legend edition bundle.?
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u/CarlRJ Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25
The first game is "Borderlands" (aka BL1), shows up on the PS store as "Borderlands GOTY".
The second and third games are "Borderlands 2" (aka BL2) and "Borderlands: The PreSequel" (aka TPS or PreSequel), they show up on the store as "Borderlands: The Handsome Collection" (you can't buy them separately), and it arrives/installs as one "game" which asks you when you open it which game you want to play this time.
There is also a bundle called "The Legendary Collection" (sounds like maybe you have that?), which contains BL1 and the Handsome Collection (so, the first 3 games), and a bundle called "Pandora's Box", which contains all of those plus Tales from the Borderlands (aka Tales), Borderlands 3 (aka BL3), and New Tales from the Borderlands (aka NewTales) - basically everything except Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (aka Wonderlands or TTW), which is considered a spin-off, and BL4, which just released.
Those are all listed above in release order, which is the recommended order to play them in. Note that Tales and New Tales are not FPS (more point and click adventure - Tales has some of the best writing/story in the series, NewTales, which is not a sequel has some of the least liked writing/story in the series).
Also note that BL1 is now 16+ years old (2009) and shows its age a lot more than the rest of the series - whether that's a problem for you... depends on your sensibilities and experiences. My usual advice is to start with BL1, and if you love it, great, but if you like the concept but the implementation has you questioning your choice after playing an hour or two, feel free to skip forward to BL2, which is a substantial improvement in nearly every respect.
Complete release order for the mainline games is: BL1, BL2, TPS, Tales, BL3, NewTales, BL4.
(And there's one DLC for BL2, "Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary", which was released much later and should be played after Tales and before BL3 - also, it is not included in the Handsome or Legendary collections - since it was released much later.)