Borderlands 4 is a game that is very clearly wrestling with itself. It’s a direct response to Borderlands 3, with the negative critical and community reaction to it going full tilt into territory it’d circled since Borderlands 2. A full-on showcase of how not to write a game, filled with nothing but grating attempts at comedy, amplified by an unfounded confidence based entirely on the fact that it doesn’t matter what Gearbox puts out, it’ll sell.
Borderlands 4 is a direct result of that confidence being knocked about, but unable to shake the now nearly two decades of baggage that comes with it. Gearbox has been riding this train since 2008, and it’s in desperate need of an overhaul, instead of the duct tape quick fix, as the train barely sticks together.
Its reputation, has of course, not been helped by repeated performances issues, crashes and bugs reported by Borderlands 4 players upon release.
The saving grace in this Borderlands 4 review is Gearbox’s great significant progress is the storytelling. The game has scaled back on what kind of humor it wants to lean into, offering moments that actually breathe, rather than undercutting them with a gag. However, it takes a more mature, darker approach and has some unintended consequences.
Borderlands 4 Review
The game doesn’t present itself as a black comedy, and in fact, doesn’t have the capabilities to be one.
Instead, its “dark” moments end up swinging way into 1990s independent comics territory. Stories so bleak that I couldn’t help but swirl my eyes in my head as the voice actress for my chosen character, Vex, gave an impassioned monologue over the situation at hand.
This leaks into the main story, where it trots out the tropes with a sense of urgency as if the game is aware that it’s just garnish waiting to be shifted out of the way. It’s weird that it would have that vibe around, as a good majority of the news around the game during development was about how it was stepping back from being figuratively written by Reddit and whatever Randy Pitchford saw on Twitter that week.
Then, at the same time, it can introduce stories with Star Trek-style sci-fi conundrums to solve, like a sentient missile that wants to figure out if it’s a dud. A mystery vending machine goose chase with puzzle solving that genuinely made me raise an eyebrow. It’s so infuriating that the game feels the need for a “main quest” when the game is honestly at its best during these smaller, focused stories.
Borderlands 4 Main Quest Feels Limp
It’s a main quest that feels limp. Characters are either not around long enough or very quickly outstay their welcome. Over the course of the game, you’ll encounter three major leaders of the different enemy factions in the game. The only one that really stuck was the initial villain, Idolator Sol, whose presence was appreciated for the slight underhanded subversion the game pulls as you close in on him.
However, while the comedy doesn’t undercut dramatic moments, the combat certainly does. A bombardment scene early on in the game loses all its tension when you realise that the scene can’t come to a close until you’ve cleared the last bad guy from the scene. Except it’s a “badass” and takes an additional minute to take them down, sucking the air out of the moment.
Other moments that appeared to be of consequence were again undercut by the game itself. Of course, this character can’t die; they hand out a quest after this. At no point in Borderlands 4 did I ever feel at “risk” or as if there were consequences for my actions. A character death directly caused by my inability to save them? Ah, well, who cares? They’re never really brought up again.
It can’t shake its theme park nature, as much as it’s wrestling with what to make of itself. Borderlands 4 wants you to see everything it has to offer, but in doing so, it never feels as devious or threatening as it originally makes itself out to be on the surface. Instead, it’s a continuous annoyance.
Borderlands 4 Story
After a while, though, once I’d travelled about the land of Kairos for some time, I became consistently irritated. Not only is the world fairly barren of things to do, but it’s a nuisance to get around. There was an instance a couple of times where I’d fallen off somewhere and couldn’t make my way back up, forcing me to travel an additional 15 minutes to re-climb the cliff to return to where I was.
This, bearing in mind, the game has introduced a grappling hook that is rarely used. It’s made this shift to introduce some elements of enhancing the movement, but it’s still the same sluggish action that Borderlands is typically known for. There are no grappling enemies, but you can grab small explosive barrels that will almost inevitably not do enough damage or miss.
Whenever you do get swinging opportunities, it’s a guided experience. You’re not going to grapple and then have any kind of freedom to move how you’d like. This will plant you back on the ground as soon as it can. It makes the entire thing feel stilted and awkward, plus, worse yet, never particularly useful.
Combat swings wildly in terms of quality. There are moments in the game where I felt everything Borderlands 4 was offering mesh into one cohesive pattern. Then, it’d spawn in another wave, furthering the entire affair far past its sell-by date. Borderlands 4 then began to irritate me further, as its core component and biggest driving force for progression, loot, is still wildly underbaked compared to other loot games in the same orbit.
Loot is Old Hat on Kairos
I’m a huge fan of loot games and action RPGs, with hours upon hours in various games that do loot far better. Borderlands 4 claims it’s all about the loot; it’s a bullet point every time the game comes out. Loot in the game is dull, consistently disappointing to boost the glistening gems amongst the cow dung. Despite games like Path of Exile and Diablo showing how loot should be done in a game, Borderlands has seemingly clung to its ways that make it feel antiquated.
There can be a dozen or more guns on the ground, with hours spent in the game spent looking at the floating menu above it. In Path of Exile, a good majority of what pops is useless to the player. The same is here in Borderlands 4. There’s no loot filters like in the better titles, which in Path of Exile clears the screen so you can focus only on what the filter determines fits your search parameters.
Then, despite the massive focus on loot, there’s no way to “love” a weapon you’ve acquired. There’s scant options for upgrades or modifying weapons that I became attached to, but their damage output lagged behind. A shotgun that felt just incredible, with an excellent alternative fire had to be junked because it just wasn’t viable anymore. Every future shotgun I acquired never felt right or had a weird quirk that made it more annoying to play with than enjoy.
Borderlands 4 Weapons Feel Underwhelming
In fact, it was rare for me to ever feel “comfortable” with any weapon set that I came across. Everything always seems at odds with the player, like someone took the risk/reward lesson too far, where it horseshoes around to be a constant irritant.
Regularly a gun would present a tonne of stats that made it desirable, only to be cursed with a “this gun needs to charge” ability, which then makes it automatic, but there’s no method of single fire to take advantage of the rest of the gun.
If you want to know what the Borderlands 4 experience is like, let me explain what happened just as I was wrapping up the game.
I had reached a room with the final big four loot boxes as a reward for beating the boss. As I opened each one, I was presented with nothing but the second lowest tier of loot and one legendary gun that isn’t practical to use at the point in the game I’m at.
Then it pushed me to replay an earlier quest with some different quirks, but Gearbox hasn’t done the work to slim them down, forcing you to sit through all the dialogue and antiquated moments of waiting around for stuff to happen. The results were not worth it.
Final Thoughts
For the 2.5 million Borderlands 4 players that have sampled Gearbox’s latest effort, they will have discovered game that is desperately trying to be something else after nearly 20 years of doing the same shtick. It’s made some inroads, but the whole thing needs overhauling. I don’t know where it goes from here, but it cannot do this bit, even if it’s better written in some spots. I cannot bear another sluggish shooter with a loot system that hasn’t kept up with where games that make loot its gimmick are at.
Whether it’s leaning further into its MMO tendencies or scrabbling to rescue its attachment to telling its story, I just don’t know where Borderlands goes from here. The repetitive nature of each title has dulled my mind around the game. I can’t critically think of where it needs to go, because since 2008, it has had a glut of an ever-melting, warping model. It’s rarely changing, and if it does, for the worse, and it’s inability to evolve as its contemporaries have managed to (even if I don’t agree with the MMO-ification of Diablo IV).
I put fifty-something hours in Borderlands 4, and all I got was a legendary gun that I dumped immediately. That’s Borderlands 4.
| Borderlands 4 | |
| Pros | Cons |
| Cut back on the irritating humor | Still Borderlands, to a fault |
| Some genuinely heartfelt moments | Constantly feels like an irritant |
| No real focus on loot outside of farming for new gear | |
| Can be genuinely unpleasant to get around in | |
2/5
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K
Release date: September 12, 2025
