Borderlands 4 In-Depth Review: A Looter-Shooter Masterpiece or Another Technical Mess
Blast from the past cel-shaded bombastic gun-hoarding franchise returns after a long wait. Here it is Borderlands 4 bringing us an all-new adventure to the new planet Kairos with four new Vault Hunters and a bazillion more guns. After spending tens and tens of hours in the game-from the opening movements to the endgame grind-it's pretty clear that this chapter narrates a game of staggering highs and baffling lows. It could just be the best game in the series, but it has somehow been trapped behind a prison now of terrible technical choices.
First Impressions: Still More Borderlands but with a Fresher Feeling
The moment you start, it feels classic Borderlands but with just enough new things to spark the flame again. It leans a bit more heavily into its sci-fi elements, presenting a world that, while chaotic and desolate, feels like an evolution. The core "loot, shoot, repeat" treadmill is not only intact but has been married to a new open-world structure that, for the most part, is an objective improvement. If you have never been a Borderlands person, this entry may not convert you, but for both casual and hardcore fans, it does enough to keep things incredibly interesting.
The New Vault Hunters: A Playground of Possibilities
Vault Hunters have always been at the heart of any Borderlands game, and this new pack boasts one of the most diverse and interesting casts to date. Each character seems to have not only different abilities, but also comes with personality, agency, and dialogue during the story. The depth here is staggering.
- Vex (The Siren): A master of the void who may be able to summon projections like Reapers or Spectres to fight alongside her, acting as powerful decoys and damage dealers.
- Aman (The Forgeknight): A seven-foot-tall mountain of muscle who serves as the tank. He can summon axes and hammers, turning the battlefield into a whirlwind of elemental chaos.
- Harlowe (The Gravitar): A tech-focused character who manipulates gravity to control the battlefield, holds enemies in stasis, and slams them into the ground.
- Rafa (The Exo-Soldier): A commando class sporting a powerful exo suit with shoulder-mounted auto-targeting cannons and deployable knives. I spent most of my time with him, and he is as much fun to use as his nimbleness and firepower promise.
Each hunter has three separate action skills, each containing a skill tree with three subsequent unique specializations. After more than 40 hours, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of one character's potential, showcasing the immense build variety Gearbox packed inside.
Gameplay: The Good, The Bad, and The Guns
The "gunplay, moment-to-moment, feels absolutely amazing." It is also more fluid than ever with a double jump, dash, hover, and a delightful grappling hook that makes up the verticality of combat arenas. The core turn hordes to paste through numbers and loot, find new awesome guns, although repeat cycles and addictive dopamine treadmill keep it going.
Gun variation is at least as creative as ever. I've found everything from sniper rifles that suck life force to pistols that shoot fireworks. The new system of "part-licensing" allows weapons to spawn with parts from multiple manufacturers, thus creating some really insane and unexpected combinations. Previously mediocre legendaries can become endgame powerhouses if the right parts are added.
However, melee combat, while it feels more satisfying than before, is less smooth than one would expect. The camera and auto-tracking can be fairly disorienting particularly against mobile or flying enemies, thus making pure melee builds somewhat entertaining but at times frustrating.
Story and Humor: A Welcome Change of Pace
Borderlands 4 is set on the new world of Kairos, a planet where the newly minted villain, The Timekeeper, rules the thrall with neural bolts. Compared to its predecessors, the tale feels more grounded and serious, partly because of the often-grating humor in Borderlands 3. The villain is treated as a real threat, and the stakes feel high.
Of course, the humor isn't gone; there's still plenty of pithy one-liners and ridiculous subquests that are glaringly Borderlands. It's just less in-your-face, which is a welcome correction. Your chosen character even gets some cutscene presence, which is a nice build of personalization within the narrative.
These are the Technical Issues & The Dreaded UI
Here, the perfectly crafted wheel Gearbox is placed on an old, clunky car. The game has, frankly, been launched in a dreadful state. Performance across both console and PC platforms is terrible; there are widespread reports of appalling optimization, constant stuttering, crashing, and being unable to maintain 60 FPS. There is a memory-leak-like occurrence on consoles that leads to the degradation of performance through continued play, requiring the player to restart every hour or so to revive a stable frame rate.
Worse than that, beyond performance, the Complete UI is utterly crap. It is so badly designed it looks like a joke.
- The backpack doesn't list equipped items first and organizes loot into an inescapable grid.
- Comparing loot requires an extra buttonpress.
- The class mod widget is functionally useless, requiring you to equip the mod and then hunt through the skill tree to see what it does.
- The Lost Loot machine does not have a "sell" button, forcing a tedious multi-step process to manage recovered gear.
In a game that revolves around the managing of the loot, this is cardinal sin in terms of how clunky and annoying the UI is.
Pros
- Insanely fun and fluid gunplay, combined with awesome movement mechanics.
- Deep and diverse Vault Hunter skill trees offering an endless array of builds.
- The new weapon parts system makes loot chase even more exhilarating.
- More grounded stories with less obnoxious humor.
- The open-world structure mostly fits well into the Borderlands formula.
- Excellent and challenging design for boss fights.
Cons
- Severe performance issues including stutters and frame drops across all platforms.
- Absolutely terrible and frustrating UI that makes inventory a hassle.
- Melee combat does not have the finesse of the gunplay.
- Some legendary weapons still feel pretty useless or way gimmicky.
- Finding your way through the open-world map can be a bit tricky, without a minimap.
Final Verdict
Deep contradictions Borderlands 4 is. At the core, it is a phenomenal looter-shooter that includes what many would consider the best gameplay and the most immersive character progression and loot loop in any of the titles in the series. There is no denying the incredible joy of zooming across an arena, using chaotic abilities, and watching enemies explode into what is oftentimes the most glorious fountain of colorful guns.
However, this brilliant core is shackled by glaring technical flaws and one of the worst UI designs in recent memory. True, the game's quality means that it's entertaining in spite of these major negatives, but they indeed cannot be ignored. If Gearbox were to finally patch these performance problems and overhaul the UI, Borderlands 4 would be an easy masterpiece. As it stands now, it's a clumsy, kind of frustrating, and utterly brilliant mess.
