I had low expectations for Borderlands 4 – but it’s now one of my favorite games of the year

Looter shooter Borderlands 4 is the first mainline game in developer Gearbox’s series that I’ve genuinely loved playing since 2012’s Borderlands 2.

While The Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 3, and spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands all had their own strong elements, something always felt like it was there to hamper overall enjoyment - be that poor pacing, agonizingly bad writing, or a lack of compelling endgame elements.

In many ways, Borderlands 4 feels like a fresh start for the series, and it’s packed with the kind of confidence that made the first two entries so endearing to me.

Chiefly, Borderlands 4 greatly tones it down on dated meme humor. It still doesn’t take itself too seriously, but characters know to read the room during the story’s more dramatic turns, while much of its comedy actually does land, and I had far more hearty laughs than I was expecting during my playthrough.

But of course, Borderlands’ story and style of humor are just the foundations, and I couldn’t recommend Borderlands 4 if its lootin’ tootin’ and shootin’ gameplay loop wasn’t up to code. And if you come to the series for the near-constant changeup of your guns, augments, grenades, and such, you’ll still find that superbly enjoyable loot chase here.

The biggest divergence in Borderlands 4 is its move to an open world. Outside of dedicated instances like vaults and end-of-chapter fortresses, the map is almost entirely seamless - the planet Kairos’s three major biomes connected in circular fashion. It’s impressive, even if the reduction in load screens leads to its own performance hitches, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

With a well-paced main story and plenty of side missions and activities on offer, there’s loads to do on your first Borderlands 4 playthrough. And while I did find the juice wasn’t always worth the squeeze with its optional diversions, I had a Torgue-sized blast with the game, and I feel the series has regained much of its edge and personality with this latest entry.

Killing time

Borderlands 4 takes place on the planet Kairos. Following the events of the third game, the planet has been thrown into disarray after the Siren Lilith forcibly transported the moon of Elpis into Kairos’s orbit. This completely shattered the flow of time and has allowed a dictatorial figure known as the Timekeeper and his underlings to seize control and keep the populace firmly under his control.

As one of four Vault Hunters, we’re captured by the Timekeeper but promptly escape from one of his facilities. From here, we travel to each of Kairos’s three biomes to free the people from his clutches and fold them into our Crimson Resistance.

It’s a simple plot, but one that serves the looter shooter action perfectly well. The Timekeeper himself isn’t exactly a villain to write home about, but I can understand that developer Gearbox Software probably wanted something a little safer after the disastrously ineffective and endlessly annoying villains of Borderlands 3.

On that note, as mentioned above, Borderlands 4’s writing is much stronger than its direct predecessor. Each playable Vault Hunter has bags of personality, while many of its side characters are surprisingly likable. Returning characters from previous entries are all winners, too, feeling better-written here than ever before. Yes, even Claptrap.

A rip-roaring good time

Not much has changed in terms of the overall gameplay loop in Borderlands 4. Despite the shift to an open world, you’ll still encounter plenty of camps of baddies (the main two factions being Psycho-like Rippers and the Timekeeper’s robotic Order), and plenty of hives of fauna like flying Kratches and skittering Creeps.

There are plenty of variants therein, too, including tougher ‘Badass’ enemies, enemies with behavioral modifiers (including status changes and on-death effects), and powerful world bosses.

Traversal does have some new quirks, though, and movement in Borderlands 4 feels better than it ever has in the series. Your grapple is a huge new addition, letting you quickly assail to higher points via grapple nodes, or for grabbing and tossing various explosives at your foes. A new glider, quick-dodge, and air dash are also really welcome, and add plenty of dynamism to both combat and traversal.

You also have quick access to a speedy hover vehicle, which can be spawned at any time (provided you’re not in a zone that doesn’t allow you to drive). I much prefer this over having to trudge to garage locations as you had to in the older games, and it makes getting around the massive Kairos map a breeze. Though fast travel locations are also available at large quest-giving outposts and after clearing certain zones of goons.

There is plenty to do throughout the open world, including side missions, and optional challenges like finding hidden vault symbols, clearing outposts, and finding vault key fragments. Though I never felt particularly incentivized to go full completion mode here, especially as the bulk of challenge rewards simply provide you with storage deck upgrades for expanding ammo capacity and backpack space. A useful upgrade for sure, but a pretty unglamorous one.

It's not his vault

The stars of Borderlands 4 are of course its playable Vault Hunters, and we’ve got a memorable cast this time around. I completed my first playthrough (as I typically do with the series’ games) with the Siren class, Vex. She’s easily my favorite Siren in the series to date, packing a delightfully smug and edgy personality with some truly devastating action skills, such as summoning copies of herself to distract enemies and deal elemental damage to them.

Harlowe is another superb addition to the roster. While her action skills can lean towards support and crowd control, my favorite has to be her Chroma Accelerator - the Vault Hunter equivalent of a massive nuke. Action skills like this and those found on other characters can of course be further modified through skills (you still get one skill point per level), and respeccing is inexpensive, allowing you to experiment to find a build that feels right for your playstyle.

Naturally, you’ll be swimming in guns, grenades, and other glorious forms of destruction. The rarity system is still in place, with rare, exotic and legendary guns offering increasingly more stats and modifiers. What’s great about equipment in Borderlands 4 is that guns can be made up of parts from multiple manufacturers.

For example, a Jakobs gun can pack a mighty punch, but a Maliwan underbarrel may give it access to an elemental alt-fire, like a corrosive gas cloud or electrical taser. A Tediore attachment might also let you lob the gun at enemies instead of reloading it, causing more damage the more ammo it has in the chamber.

Grenades have seen a massive upgrade, too, and now come in several forms. Jakobs ‘grenades’ for example are now devastating throwing knives. You can also equip an Ordnance in your grenade slot, effectively replacing the rocket launcher weapon type from prior games. Oh, and better yet, grenades are now replenishable on cooldown as opposed to being their own ammo type.

Glitch in the system

I have greatly enjoyed my time with Borderlands 4, but there are definitely a few bugbears to make note of, particularly when it comes to performance. Having a big open world is nice, offering plenty of variety from verdant forests and snowy peaks to arid Pandora-like deserts and dilapidated factories and high-tech bases.

There is a cost to the world’s more seamless nature, though. Performance, at least on PC, could be much better. Frame drops and hitches were a constant annoyance over the course of my playthrough, even with one of Nvidia’s current-generation graphics cards. DLSS and frame generation are supported and do help to smooth things out to a degree, but the overbearing issues certainly remained.

Another issue I ran into was that my graphics settings would slightly alter sometimes when I booted the game. Usually, this was DLSS disabling itself or changing preset, but sometimes the entire graphics preset would increase or decrease, leading to some fiddling around when I noticed performance was worse than usual. Hopefully this is something that gets addressed soon in post-launch patches.

Gameplay-wise, I think some of the enemy modifiers could do with a bit of tweaking, at least for a first-time normal mode playthrough. Enemies with regenerating health or additional health, armor, or shield bars weren’t particularly interesting to fight, mainly acting as irritating bullet sponges.

But to end on a high note, I really enjoyed Borderlands 4’s music. It’s never been something that particularly stood out to me in the other games, but here, it sets the stage for combat very well. Engaging Rippers, for example, will be accompanied by a fast-paced punk rock sound. While the robotic Order troops prefer a more techno-driven soundscape. It’s genuinely great stuff.

Should you play Borderlands 4?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

Borderlands 4 is teeming with accessibility options. Robust subtitle options are featured, including size, color, and background opacity. There are several audio presets for those who are hard of hearing, as well as protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia colorblind settings for user interface elements. Oh, and if you really can't stand Claptrap, there is a dedicated volume slider for him, too.

How I reviewed Borderlands 4

My first playthrough of Borderlands 4 lasted 40 hours for this review. That included a complete playthrough of the main campaign, while also ticking off several side missions, objectives, and vault challenges. Having poured hundreds of hours into previous games in the series, I went out of my way to compare the quality and quantity on offer here in relation to other Borderlands titles, and came away satisfied with this latest entry.

I played on my new gaming PC, powered by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU and Intel Core i5 14400F CPU, via Steam, primarily using the 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Controller, with some time also spent playing the game with mouse and keyboard. While my main playthrough was with Vex, I also tested the other Vault Hunters including Harlowe, Rafa, and Amon.

First reviewed September 2025