Payday 2: Border Crossing Heist Review (TigerKirby215)
"Oh come on this heist can't be THAT bad."
Wow. It's that bad.
Excluding "this is just a bunch of reused assets!" this heist just isn't fun. "Day" 1 is decent enough both in stealth and in loud (even if finding the damn tunnel is a headache) but "Day" 2 (which isn't a day so if you fail you have to do the entirety of "Day" 1 again :^)) is everything wrong with Payday 2 difficulty balance personified. An absolutely ridiculous amount of enemy spawns tied with an ungodly amount of Snipers basically mandates you run a health-based perk deck like Muscle, Kingpin (if you own it), Sociopath (maybe?), Grinder (which doesn't have enough sustain for the top difficulties), or of course: Stoic. (And Copycat versions of these decks do exist too, for better or worse.) Dodge gets shredded by all the Snipers, Armor builds get shredded by all the cops and then the Snipers just shoot through your armor... There's basically no practical way to deal with the absolutely ridiculous amount of Sniper spawns, especially when you have to haul dozens of loot bags across an open field.
Border Crystals isn't exactly better. Conceptually a "harder Cookoff" isn't a bad idea and I like some of the ideas in this heist for a change of pace. But holy shit running through Sniper Town MEX every time you want to grab the Meth ingredients is asinine. It feels like Overkill heard the complaints of "Cookoff is too easy" with a highly defensible cooking location and decided to overcorrect with a warehouse that offers absolutely zero cover with cops spawning out of the goddamn walls.
I can excuse this heist as Overkill's first venture back into Payday 2 content to fund Payday 3 but honestly as a standalone product the only reason to buy this is to get the achievements for completing all of Locke's heists. And like, Mega Sangres too I guess.