10 Open-World Games That Punish You For 100%
7. Borderlands
This is true in varying degrees of all three mainline Borderlands games, whereby blasting your way through the side content - especially if you include the DLC - along with the main story in a single playthrough is a guaranteed path to become outrageously OP.
Being a completionist will ensure the focal engagements offer up little-to-no resistance, even later in the game, and as fun as the combat feels regardless, some of the shine gets taken off it when there's no real sense of accomplishment.
Thankfully Borderlands 2 introduced the considerably more difficult True Vault Hunter Mode - effectively a New Game+ - but for anyone who generally beats games once and the moves on, it didn't provide much solace.
If you want to just comprehensively beat a Borderlands game once and start playing something else, you need to either ditch some of the side content or make peace with the fact you'll tear-ass through the game without much opposition.