Borderlands 4 is repetitive, offers hardly any innovation, but looting is still very tempting

Philipp Rüegg

16/9/2025

Translation: Elicia Payne

Pictures: Philipp Rüegg

Instead of innovation, Borderlands 4 relies on tried and tested fare with minor improvements. The Vault Hunters are much more agile, the world’s bigger and the addiction to new weapons is quickly awakened.

The recipe for success in Borderlands consists of millions and millions of weapons and a large serving of humour. Though, humour was significantly lacking in the last instalment. The memeification was simply too stupid for many die-hard fans – myself included. It was the first game I didn’t finish.

Studio Gearbox wants to make everything better with Borderlands 4. Instead of the annoying streamer twins Troy and Tyreen, the Timekeeper’s another classic villain waiting to be hunted down. The Timekeeper is the tyrannical boss of the planet Kairos, whose population he subjugates by means of mind control. This fate also affects me, a Vault Hunter – after my character crashes on the planet.

As a thank you, I get an implant that gives the timekeeper control over me. Before he can make me his vassal, I’m rescued by a group of rebels, and that’s when the adventure begins.

As Rafa, I follow the friendly rebels who freed me. On the way I meet Claptrap, the one-wheeled robot. If you were annoyed by his chatter in the past, you’ll wish you had a fast-forward button now too. I’m part of Team Claptrap and still find the tinny little punk very entertaining.

I’ll admit, it’s not an award-winning story. That’s why I don’t get annoyed by badly aged internet jokes. The story offers the right amount of entertainment to break up the excessive shooting escapades. Same goes for my character Rafa. With his Spanish accent and cocky manner, he serves pretty much all the clichés attributed to Latinos in action cinema. But, the fact that his sayings are repeated several times in the first few hours worries me.

Apart from these skills, battles still follow the same pattern, i.e. enemies come at me from all directions. They may not be tactical, but they have mass, and attack from the air or use area-wide projectiles. My strategy hasn’t really changed. I still run around like a headless chicken and dodge attacks. Thanks to the new movement options, this works much more smoothly than before. First and foremost, however, I rely on the penetrating power of my weapons and simply keep shooting until things calm down.

I didn’t discover any real variety from different enemy types in the first ten hours. Whether masked madmen, flying magicians or sword-wielding robot ninjas – nothing really changes. This already became monotonous over time in the first game in 2009.

There’s a whole lot of action, which is fun, but the weapon effects are repetitive. According to the official description, there are 30 billion weapons. It’s been the trademark of Borderlands since the first game. They come in various degrees of rarity, from common to legendary. The latter is supposed to be much rarer, but have all the more impact. I haven’t discovered any yet.

Unfortunately, none of my shooting implements were really original. The closest I had was the submachine gun, which turns into a homing missile when reloaded. I’m hoping for more in the next few hours of play. Still, the weapons look original and sound really powerful.

In addition to the four guns that can be equipped and the grenade slot, which can also contain a throwing knife, there’s now also a healing syringe. It works via a cooldown and has bonus properties. This is definitely better than having to collect health containers in the past.

It’s more fun to roam through the area as a foursome than to mix up Kairos on your own. I can play the entire campaign in co-op mode. As soon as it’s completed, additional modes like «boss runs» open up. Unfortunately, unlike in the past, I’ve not yet been able to convince my friends to buy it. So I played with strangers. In one session, I was accompanied by a person who played Vex. She can conjure up a glowing purple panther creature to fight for her. How cool! Perhaps I’ve chosen the wrong character in Rafa after all – I can’t exactly pet my two shoulder cannons.

While the basic gameplay has hardly changed, Gearbox has delivered welcome quality-of-life improvements. I can have an illuminated path to the next destination displayed. Weapons can be filtered according to various criteria in the inventory or at the dealer. That way I can reject all the common and uncommon ones much more quickly and even be alerted if I have one of them on me.

You have to manually unlock fast travel points. These are usually bunkers or similar bases that have to be cleared of enemies and then activated via a simple door or energy puzzle.

Kairos’s teeming with these kinds of side activities. I can accept bounty contracts in these bunkers. In settlements, I receive side quests. And there’s plenty of other collectables such as finding rebel logos, opening secret treasure chests or clearing arenas of mini-bosses. They’re all the same in terms of play. I destroy everything in my path and collect a reward at the end. That’s why I’m constantly switching between boredom and «oooh, this new weapon makes a nice pewpew».

The world’s nice to look at. A threatening purple planet hangs in the sky, at the brink of braking. The first of the four large areas is a kind of futuristic Wild West with farms, herds of buffalo and gigantic industrial buildings that probably produce some kind of killing machines. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t really feel alive. Everything looks botchy. I’ve not really had the feeling that someone really lives in a coherent world. It’s an anarchistic madhouse where everyone’s out to get everyone. It doesn’t exude much personality.

I only remember one of the side quests, the one with a talking bomb that has a crisis of meaning because it might be a dud. Unfortunately, the quest ends somewhat anticlimatically.

Visually, Gearbox has remained true to the iconic cel-shading design. At first glance, the game looks exactly like Borderlands 3. On closer inspection, however, the character models are more detailed and the explosions more spectacular. Still, you shouldn’t expect a graphical overachiever – although the performance requirements give the impression of one. Even with an RTX 5090 and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, I only manage just under 40 FPS with 4K resolution and maximum details. With DLSS set to «Quality» it’s a tolerable 60 FPS, but only with 2x frame generation activated is it a pleasant 120 FPS. You can’t play Borderlands 4 on the Steam Deck. The more powerful Lenovo Legion Go S manages between 30 and 40 FPS with a 1200p resolution, low details, FSR set to «Performance» and frame generation enabled.

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford doesn’t seem to see any problems with this. In his latest social media rant, he calls on dissatisfied players to program their own engine and show how it’s done. «Borderlands 4 is a premium game, made for premium gamers,» he announces on X. I definitely think it needs to be optimised – both in terms of performance and the CEO.

And this applies to the rest of the game, too. On several occasions, it crashed on me. Sometimes lips don’t move during dialogue or the audio’s completely missing. I still can’t even use weapons from the paid DLC because the game’s convinced I don’t own it. Yet, the code that 2K sent me for testing purposes definitely contains all the DLC.

Nevertheless, a little more variety wouldn’t hurt Borderlands 4. Now and again, I enjoy that it’s the kind of game I can completely switch off in and go full throttle at the trigger. Maybe this’ll make me forget that a completely fun-free movie adaptation has been released in the meantime.

Borderlands 4 is available for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. A Switch 2 version will follow on 3 October. I tested the PC version provided to me by 2K.

Philipp Rüegg

Senior Editor

Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.ch

As a child, I wasn't allowed to have any consoles. It was only with the arrival of the family's 486 PC that the magical world of gaming opened up to me. Today, I'm overcompensating accordingly. Only a lack of time and money prevents me from trying out every game there is and decorating my shelf with rare retro consoles. more

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