Borderlands 4 Review – Too Much Of An Overcorrection

A direct sequel to Borderlands 3, Borderlands 4 aims to rectify the various issues of its predecessor–namely, the overreliance on cringe jokes, overly talkative main villains, and bullet-sponge boss battles. And while these issues are addressed, it may have been an overcorrection as Borderlands 4 is cranked so far in the other direction that the resulting game feels like a strange imitation of the series. The core bread and butter of the franchise–rewarding looting and satisfying shooting–remains the same, delivering hours of solid first-person shooter gameplay. The narrative elements, however, are weaker than ever.

Like its predecessors, Borderlands 4 sees you embody one of four playable Vault Hunters, outlaw mercenaries willing to do pretty much whatever, whenever, for money and a chance to uncover one of the many treasure-filled Vaults left behind by a long-dead civilization. Each Vault Hunter possesses unique skill trees and abilities, allowing you to flavor your approach to the game the way you want. Vex the Siren is a summoner who can create ghostly visages of either herself or a fanged beast to attract enemy fire away from her, for example, while Amon the Forgeknight uses advanced tech to create elemental axes, whips, or a shield so he can wade into melee combat.

This feels like Borderlands’ strongest assortment of Vault Hunters to date. While no past Vault Hunter has been a truly bad choice, this is the first time that each Vault Hunter feels incredibly useful in all aspects of play, whether it’s dealing with groups of everyday enemies, cutting away at larger bosses, or aiding allies in co-op while they focus on doing most of the damage. While I played as Vex in my main playthrough, I didn’t dislike my time with other Vault Hunters on new save files.

There’s no way to truly know if all four Vault Hunters equally stack up until folks have had time to put a substantial amount of hours into playing as each one, but for once, I don’t feel the need to dissuade first-time Borderlands players from one or two of the options. Each Vault Hunter is fun to play because they all feel powerful and can stand on their own or make meaningful contributions to a team, and it feels rewarding to learn and master each of their respective abilities.

Like past Vault Hunters, they don’t contribute all that much narrative-wise, however. This usually isn’t much of a problem as the main characters of Borderlands have regularly been those around the Vault Hunters–long-time fans likely remember the likes of Angel, Tannis, Scooter, Handsome Jack, Tiny Tina, Mad Moxxi, and (unfortunately) Claptrap. As part of the clear plan to distance Borderlands 4 from the last entry, this game does not focus on these characters. Borderlands 3 had a familiar face popping up what felt like every 30 minutes, while Borderlands 4 only has a handful of returning characters, and they’re on screen for only a few minutes, save for a couple of exceptions.

Subsequently, it’s on the new cast of characters to create any semblance of an emotional connection. Unfortunately, they’re all very boring. Rush is your typical strong guy with a heart of gold, for instance, and Zadra is a dubious scientist with a shady past. It’s difficult to connect with these people because the game doesn’t give them any characterization beyond simple generalizations, and few feel consequential to the plot. I knew Borderlands 4’s characters had not grabbed me when I was playing through a mission where–had I been fast enough–I could have saved the life of one of the Vault Hunters’ allies. I was not fast enough, failed the optional objective to save him, and he died. But I didn’t feel anything for that loss, and the game continued with other characters fulfilling that character’s role.

For as much as I hate Claptrap, at least he evokes some type of emotional response from me. I see him and I wish to do all in my power to make him suffer, and I laugh with glee when he’s forced to confront something uncomfortable or traumatic–especially when it’s something optional that I can choose to do to him. A decent character makes you feel something, and has some sort of presence in the story they’re a part of. That’s something Borderlands has routinely been good at–pretty much every main character of the past games has been someone’s favorite, but also someone else’s most hated. They evoke strong reactions.

But Borderlands 4 seems to do everything in its power to make sure that its characters cannot be hated. In doing so, the game overcorrects and centers its plot around a cast that’s so two-dimensional and bland that, after meeting anyone new, I was tuning out what they were saying within minutes. This does mean the complaints about the humor being cringey or the characters being annoying are gone. But instead, now there’s no one to love, so Borderlands 4’s story and characters are just dull.

It’s never quite clear what your emotional investment in Borderlands 4 is supposed to be. In the first two games, you were hunting a Vault to get money, and (especially in Borderlands 2) there was an easy-to-hate asshole goading you into killing them the entire way through. In Borderlands 3, you’re a freedom fighter trying to protect the characters you’ve met over the previous games from twisted livestreamers.

Borderlands 4 is messy, though. Your character wants to find a Vault, but they’re sidetracked when the resident big bad, The Timekeeper, sticks them with an implant that lets him track the Vault Hunter and control their actions for a brief period of time. And so you think, “Oh, I gotta get this out of me!” and that would be a strong adventuring hook, but then almost immediately, you get a little robot companion that can block The Timekeeper’s signal, so he can neither track nor control you, and it’s like the implant isn’t even there. But your character still listens to Claptrap on first meeting him, and puts Vault Hunting on indefinite hold to instead rally together a group of resistance fighters to take down The Timekeeper and his three lieutenants. You become instantly loyal to a cause you heard about mere moments prior, and the far more compelling motivations of getting revenge or gaining independence are left behind.

So why keep playing? Because, for as poor as Borderlands 4’s story is, the gameplay is pretty freaking good. The moment-to-moment gunplay is ridiculous fun, complemented by each Vault Hunter’s extraordinary class abilities like boomeranging double-bladed axes, bouncy-ball black holes, heat-seeking missiles, and ghostly wildcats. Enemies explode into glorious viscera and multicolored loot, each flashy bauble a chance to acquire a new favorite firearm or grenade or throwing knife or rocket launcher. I loved poring over the dozens of items I would loot with each mission to carefully curate what could be scrapped for cash and what deserved to rotate into my loadout.

Even if you can’t change your Vault Hunter without starting a new save file, each possesses three distinct skill trees that allow you to change their playstyle in substantial ways. One of Rafa the Exo-Soldier’s trees focuses on using elemental blades to wade into melee, for example, while another gives him auto-aiming shoulder turrets that can fire bullets, missiles, or bombs. His entire kit is based on doing a lot of damage with hit-and-run tactics, but you have agency in deciding how that damage is primarily dealt. Reallocating skill points isn’t free, but once you’re a few hours into the game, you’ll be finding enough excess loot that you can regularly sell what you’re not using to afford a respec.

There’s a similar level of customization involved when it comes to equipment. Early on, I designed a build for Vex that focused on ricocheting bullets and throwing knives off enemy heads to nail multiple critical hits in a row, and I figured that would last me the rest of the game. It paired well with her ability to summon carbon copies of herself armed with firearms of their own. But then I found a grenade that created black holes and made everything sucked into it susceptible to elemental damage, and suddenly the shotgun that could switch between Corrosive and Radiation damage that I had found minutes before seemed pretty good, and I reallocated Vex’s skill points to focus on her stacking multiple elemental effects and wading into melee. It was just as much fun as my previous build, and I’d go on to make plenty of others for Vex over my playthrough. Borderlands 4 regularly rewards experimentation, and with the abundance of loot keeping your money reserves high, you’re encouraged to pay for the skill reallocation fee to jump into new builds without fear.

Borderlands 4 also has excellent movement mechanics. Sliding and climbing–both of which were added to Borderlands in the third mainline game–are faster than before, and new gliding and grappling-hook opportunities open up new ways to travel. While gliding, you can soar over large gaps or hover and shoot in midair, whereas the grappling hook gives you the option to grab and pull explosive containers to you (giving you a makeshift bomb to throw at enemies), rip away enemy shields, reach faraway platforms, or swing around different levels. The grappling hook is limited in that it can only connect to certain points and objects, but almost every level has an opportunity to use it in some way, and adding momentum to your strategy in a firefight can present some fun options.

My favorite example of this has to be when I found a shield for my Vault Hunter that would explode a second after breaking, damaging all enemies around me. I equipped it and later ran into a fight where one pesky flying enemy was proving extremely difficult to hit with my loadout that was focused on methodical marksmanship, not spraying and praying. So I used the grappling hook to pull myself away from the enemies on the ground just as they broke my shield, sending me soaring through the sky in the split second it took for the shield to explode–I killed the flying enemy with the subsequent area-of-effect explosion, then quickly turned around in midair and nailed the remaining enemies still on the ground with a few headshots. I had somehow turned myself into a makeshift catapult where I was the bomb!

That particular situation never happened again, but for that one glorious moment, I felt like a genius that had somehow cheated the game. I chased that feeling, and even if the exact circumstances of it never reappeared, I did replicate that sensation, just with other abilities and weapons in other various scenarios. Those were the moments in which I enjoyed Borderlands 4 the most.

But this all occurred early into Borderlands 4–probably the first 10 or so hours. This joy lessens the further into Borderlands 4 you go, as you run into pretty much every enemy type about halfway through the story, and the new ones you run into after that are mostly variations of what came before. This repetition eventually leaves combat feeling stale, stretching out the game beyond its welcome.

Borderlands 4 is full of side quests too, ranging from absurd tasks–like helping a woman who’s losing her mind perform unhinged experiments on other people, or participating in a triathlon around a whole section of the map that ends with you carrying a bomb towards the finish line–to collectible hunting. It’s clear that the game expects you to do some of them, as you don’t level up fast enough to remain on par with the enemies you encounter in the story without doing several optional tasks to grind for extra experience.

This can slow progression quite a bit if you avoid the optional tasks for too long, and unless you’re ready to play Borderlands 4 on the easiest difficulty, it’s extremely difficult to do any meaningful damage to an enemy that’s four or more levels higher than you. All of which would be fine if the side quests weren’t so boring or at least possessed some humor–a traditional Borderlands tentpole that’s missing from this entry. As a result, the only incentive to do any optional quest is to level up high enough to get back to the main quest–the side activities are frustrating, time-filling fluff, not meaningful narrative experiences.

All in all, if uncovering loot, crafting builds, and unleashing chaotic mayhem is what you’re looking for, Borderlands 4 has you covered. It’s the most mechanically sound Borderlands game to date, and the various Vault Hunters each present an entertaining opportunity to tackle the game in a different way. Just maybe find a good podcast or video essay to fill the moments between the shooting and looting. The game’s story and characters aren’t strong enough to hold your attention on their own, and the game’s combat begins to drag once you’ve seen all the enemy types there are to see.