[h2]I learned that suffering fools is never worthwhile. Really perfect that's a key to success, now go spread the word about Clap Trap Aeronautics Academy...[/h2]
After 50 hours with Borderlands 4, I walked away with one overwhelming thought: this game has the best gunplay in the franchise trapped inside one of the most forgettable Borderlands I’ve ever played.
Let’s get the positives out of the way first because there are quite a few. The shooting is phenomenal. Every weapon feels satisfying, combat is incredibly addictive, the new movement mechanics like the grappling hook and gliding make traversing combat arenas much more dynamic, the skill trees are massive and fun to experiment with, and the cross-play/cross-progression implementation is excellent. Being able to seamlessly continue your character on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, or the upcoming Switch 2 version is exactly how modern games should handle it.
Unfortunately, almost everything surrounding that fantastic gameplay ranges from mediocre to frustrating.
[b]Story & Characters[/b]
The story is easily one of the weakest in the series. Maybe Handsome Jack set the bar impossibly high back in Borderlands 2, but the main villain here is painfully forgettable. The humor was also lost somewhere along the road. There are attempts at jokes, but they usually feel like the game is desperately waving its arms yelling, “LOOK, I’M BEING FUNNY!” while simultaneously overexplaining the punchline. Instead of laughing, I was punching myself in the face. I even had to dismiss playing several Vault Hunter classes just cause they had a terrible voice actor meaning the only proper way of playing BL4 would be by turning the dialogue volume to 0 and turning the subtitles off.
The characters don’t fare much better. The only ones I actually remembered by the end were the returning characters from Borderlands 2. Everyone new blends together into a cast of NPCs whose names I struggled to recall minutes after meeting them.
Take Arjay, for example. He’s introduced during the tutorial, dies roughly twenty minutes later, and then shows up again as a post-game boss. My reaction wasn’t excitement it was, “Wait… who is this guy again?” I genuinely had to look him up on the wiki to remember he was the tutorial character. That’s probably the best way I can summarize how little impact the story had on me.
[b]Side Quests[/b]
The side quests In Borderlands 2, you’d accept a quest, immediately get a marker, and maybe listen to some optional radio dialogue while actually playing the game. Borderlands 4 constantly interrupts the gameplay by making you stand around while NPCs ramble for two to five minutes before you’re even allowed to start the mission. During that time, literally nothing happens. You can take your hands off the keyboard, go AFK, take a piss, finish Borderlands 2, come back, and only then will the quest marker finally appear. None of it is skippable and It completely kills the pacing.
[b]Gameplay[/b]
Ironically, the gameplay itself is carried me through all 50 hours. The weapon feel is easily the best the series has ever had. Every firefight is satisfying, movement feels fantastic, and I constantly wanted “just one more mission” because actually shooting things never stopped being fun. If only it consisted of 50 hours of shooting things it would’ve been the best game in the franchise.
The skill trees are fantastic and offer a ton of customization. Building my Vex around Trouble was genuinely fun, and by the end of the game my companion became so ridiculously powerful that it could clear encounters almost by itself. I was impressed that the build actually worked. On the other, I realized I barely had to participate anymore. It’s fun to create builds, but it also feels like almost every path is viable enough that your decisions rarely carry much weight.
Loot is similarly inconsistent. Legendaries and Mythics are appropriately rare, but they rarely feel exciting because there’s a good chance you’ll immediately find some random weapon lying on the ground with significantly better stats that will carry you for the next five levels.
[b]Bosses[/b]
Most of them are just oversized bullet sponges surrounded by a bunch of smaller enemies so you can easily trigger Second Wind if things go wrong. The genuinely enjoyable bosses are hidden away in the post-game, but telling someone “the bosses get good after the 50-hour campaign” is about as convincing as saying One Piece gets good around episode 6969.
[b]Open World[/b]
The open world is a massive downgrade compared to Borderlands 3. Instead of multiple distinct planets packed with personality, Borderlands 4 gives you one giant map that feels stretched far beyond what it needed to be. Traveling between objectives often means driving through long stretches where absolutely nothing happens. No bandit convoys chasing you. No dynamic encounters. Just empty roads leading to the next objective.
Even worse, the world is filled with invisible walls that constantly remind you it isn’t nearly as open as it pretends to be. The different regions also blur together visually with far less biome variety and environmental detail than Borderlands 3. To me, it feels like a downgrade despite being a much newer game.
[b]Performance & Optimization[/b]
Performance is abysmal. The initial shader compilation is long but understandable. The problem is that the game insists on recompiling shaders after seemingly every hardware change or even a GPU driver update, meaning I regularly had to sit through another 15-20 minute wait just to continue my playthrough because NVIDIA sneezed and decided to release yet another driver. That’s frustrating enough on its own, but it’s even harder to justify when the game is such a resource hog while offering surprisingly modest visual improvements. In many areas, it barely looks better than Borderlands 3, a game that was ported to the original Nintendo Switch.
[b]Co-op[/b]
Co-op is another example of Borderlands 4 doing the technical side right while missing the gameplay side. Cross-play and cross-progression are fantastic, inviting your friends if they’re playing on PS or XBOX has never been easier, but the game rarely gives you a reason to actually play together. Enemy scaling mostly means more Badass enemies with bigger health pools, so missions don’t become more interesting they just take longer. Unlike Borderlands 2, where different Vault Hunters often complemented each other with meaningful class synergies, Borderlands 4 feels like everyone is simply playing their own overpowered character next to each other.
[b]Final Thoughts[/b]
I don’t regret playing Borderlands 4. If anything, I’m disappointed because there’s clearly an amazing game buried underneath all of these problems. The combat, movement, weapon feel, and overall gameplay loop are the best the franchise has ever been. But the forgettable story, weak characters, lifeless open world, pacing issues, disappointing loot, repetitive bosses, and baffling optimization constantly get in the way of what should have been one of the best entries in the series.
When the credits rolled, my first thought wasn’t “I can’t wait to replay this.” It was, “Well… that was kinda fun. Time to free up 150 GB on my SSD and install a better game.”
[h3]a Borderlands 4/10.[/h3]
[b]P.S. Do not ever, and I mean ever, try playing this game on a Steam Deck. The “Verified” badge is a straight-up lie and should be removed. The game averages under 20 FPS, it’s a horrible experience.[/b]
