Borderlands has become one of 2K’s go to franchises between the mainline entries from Gearbox Software and even the Telltale Games spin-offs. The series may just seem like your typical repetitive looter shooter on the surface, but the charming characters and overall style have been the secret sauce that has kept players coming back for more with each subsequent entry.
After a strong launch, some fans viewed the third entry less favorably upon reflection. However, Borderlands 4 aims to avoid this by offering players a game that is great now and will remain so after countless hours of play.
Journey to a New Planet
Borderlands 4 takes place six years after the ending to Borderlands 3 on a new planet known as Kairos, which was previously shielded from everyone else’s knowledge until the ending of the third entry. Kairos is run by a dictator named The Timekeeper, who leads the group known as The Order. Your goal is to take down The Order piece by piece until you get to take on The Timekeeper himself. This is done through the game’s main story mode, which is split into four parts across 21 individual missions.
Under The Timekeeper are three main bosses that you must face off against, each of which is the focus of a series of main missions. The first boss takes up the first six missions as it also serves as the intro to the game, while the following two sets of four missions each focus on the second and third boss respectively. From there, the final seven missions involve taking down The Timekeeper, offering a well-structured experience for players to navigate. The story in Borderlands 4 is definitely a step up from its predecessor, with a darker tone compared to past entries, where humor was always front and center.
As is tradition now with the series, each Borderlands entry comes with entirely new Vault Hunters for you to play as. While the game has a new cast of playable characters, that does not mean you won’t see plenty of classic characters return, including former playable characters. You’ll see the likes of Claptrap, of course, but also others like Mad Moxxi, Zane, and more. The game introduces plenty of new characters that really stand out, which is no surprise given this series.
Besides the main story missions, there are always side missions scattered around the map in Borderlands, and Borderlands 4 is no different. There are numerous side missions and tasks to do besides the main story missions, which you can choose to take part in or skip entirely. I always love taking on the various missions largely due to the interesting cast of characters you get to meet. Where else but Borderlands can you have a side mission where you befriend a defective talking missile named Gigi. She wants to know why she was a dud and asks for help to try again to determine if she truly is a dud. Getting a bit emotional about a defective missile was not on my list of things I expected when I started Borderlands 4, but I love the moments like this that are found all throughout the game’s side missions.
Another favorite side mission of mine involved finding a sentient AI inside a toilet named GenIVIV, which first demands that the entire village using the toilet be slaughtered to save her. Instead, Claptrap is called in to transfer her AI to another by first transporting it into him. GenIVIV and Claptrap seem to have a history where she despises him, but going inside him makes her fall in love and once they find a new body, she goes crazy for love and will do anything for said love, including killing anyone that gets in her way. Only in Borderlands will you have moments like this, and knowing they are filled throughout the side missions really makes you want to play through them all.
One of the biggest complaints about some other entries in the series, namely Borderlands 3, is that it relied way too much on humor that more recently trended towards being more cringe than anything else. Borderlands 4 eschews this problem by offering players the aforementioned darker main story with The Timekeeper, while the side missions are where the more zany Borderlands humor really comes into play more often. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of humor in the main story too, but it seemed to be dialed back a bit more here for a more balanced experience all around that won’t turn off players from the get go.
Building on the Past
Borderlands 4 offers three difficulty levels for players that you can swap back and forth between during the game. This is helpful, especially for players who may play on a higher difficulty with friends but switch to solo and want an easier experience. As always, playing on Hard is the best way to go if you can handle the difficulty, as it offers better loot and the elemental affinities matter more than in the other difficulties.
Borderlands 4 introduces a new cast of playable Vault Hunters, as mentioned prior, each representing a different class. Vex is a Siren who can call upon ghastly creatures to help you in battle using Phase energy, while specifically using kinetic or all elements. Amon is a Forgeknight that uses drones at both blades and shields, specifically focusing on incendiary and cryo elements. Harlowe is a Gravitar capable of controlling time and space, focusing on using cryo and radiation elements. Lastly, Rafa is an Exo-Soldier that uses the body of a Tediore Deadframe and primarily employs Shock and Corrosive elements. Borderlands 4 has done a good job at balancing all four so that you can have a lot of fun with any of the chosen Vault Hunters, though my personal favorite was definitely Vex.
For each Vault Hunter you select, you will have three separate Action Skills to choose from that each have their own skill tree for you to build. For instance, Vex has the Incarnate Action Skill that creates a Phase Explosion that deals damage to nearby enemies and restores her own health. During this time, she can also use Eldritch Blast to deal damage. My personal favorite Dead Ringer lets her spawn Phase Clone Minions of either a Specter or Reaper to help you in battle. The Reaper specifically taunts and deals melee damage, while the Specter deals gun damage. The Reaper is why I personally love this one so much, because it helps immensely as a way to get the attention of opponents, especially in moments where I would get low in health. The final option for Vex is Phase Phamiliar, where she summons a phantom creature named Trouble that helps you in battle.
Each of the Action Skills for each character has its own strengths and weaknesses, which you can further enhance through the way you build the subsequent skill tree. The six-level skill trees are each filled with mostly Passive skills that you can unlock, while there are also some Augments that give new abilities to that specific Action Skill. The way you build your skill tree is by using skill points that you unlock by leveling up, with further levels of the tree unlocking as you use more skill points. As always, you can go to your home base and respec if you are not liking the way your current tree is going if you want to switch to another Action Skill and use the skill points there. Either way, I highly recommend that you pick one Action Skill to focus on at a time and only spend skill points on that specific one, rather than try to space them out.
The customization for your character doesn’t stop there as you know from playing any Borderlands games before or any kind of looter shooter. Your inventory and current loadout will be changing constantly as you play through the game. At the start, you are limited to only two equipped weapons at a time, but eventually you’ll be able to have four weapons, an ordinance, a repkit, an enhancement, a shield, and a class mod equipped at a time.
You have complete control over what kinds of weapons you want to have equipped at any given time, whether you want to have four types of assault rifles or four different weapon types. I greatly recommend having different weapon types for each slot, though, as having ones that share the same type of ammo will lead to ammo problems before too long. My go-to weapon was usually an assault rifle, but I almost always had an assault rifle, submachine gun, and shotgun equipped, with the fourth slot rotating between a pistol and sniper rifle depending on the situation. The ordinance slot lets you pick either a grenade or a heavy weapon that you can use in spurts before having to wait for a cooldown.
As with any other game like this, the loot that you acquire is color-coded based on its rarity. The lowest level is the white/gray common, green is uncommon, blue is rare, purple is epic, and gold is legendary. The latter is obviously the hardest to acquire in the game, and you’ll be playing quite deep into the game without any unless you get some golden keys by entering SHiFT codes that the developer provides regularly. Just because an item is a higher rarity doesn’t immediately mean it’s better than another lower rarity item, though, as each item also has a level. This means if you have a higher-level rare, it may be more useful to you than a lower-level legendary, so you have to play around to see what is best for you.
The base gameplay in Borderlands 4 is just like in past entries, where you play through the game’s story missions and side missions in whichever order you wish and have to make your way across the large map. You have numerous weapons and abilities at your disposal, as mentioned above, which you will be using constantly in the game, as enemies are always spawning in your path and especially at mission markers. The overall mechanics of shooting feel better than ever here, with the varying guns offering different styles that you can play around with until you find the right one. Weapons also have modes you can switch between, so there is much to be played around with to find just what you’re looking for. And that might only be for a bit until you find the next great weapon as well.
New Means of Travel
As in the past, you will learn to rely on your vehicle as a way to travel across the large maps and that is once again the case here. By pressing right on the D-Pad, you can summon your vehicle at nearly any time and use it to quickly get from point A to point B. Unless you have a fast travel spot unlocked, this is easily the best way to travel around, but thankfully, the game has also introduced a few new abilities to help make traversal that much better with a grapple hook and glide ability.
The grapple hook is unfortunately specific to grapple points found throughout the world and can be used by pressing R3. These are used in several ways, such as reaching higher platforms, crossing large gaps, and sometimes pulling an object with the grapple hook during a mission. The grapple hook can also be used on the ground to grab certain items from a distance, though this is not always that easy to pull off, due to having to be exactly in the right spot most of the time to pull it off.
Even more useful is the new mechanic of gliding, which you will learn very early in the game. This not only lets you make it across larger gaps that you would not be able to otherwise, but also becomes such an easier way to travel the map when trying to make it from one location to another. Even on close to flat plains, gliding seems to move faster, and I found myself using it constantly while playing. The best use of it is when you are on a raised island and can use it to reach other areas without taking a super long path in the opposite direction you would have otherwise. Gliding can also come in handy during fights as well, specifically boss battles, as you can often avoid projectiles that are aimed at the ground if you time your jumps and glides just right. Gliding is without a doubt a new staple of the series that I cannot imagine playing without in future entries.
Borderlands 4 does a good job at keeping the game fresh with a wide range of different enemy types in the game, so you keep coming across new ones just when you thought you had seen them all. These vary in difficulty, with them also scaling to your level most of the time, so that you never feel too overpowered. Some of the biggest challenges, though, come from the bosses in the game that can be a nightmare if you are not prepared with the right kinds of weapons or strategies. The bosses in Borderlands 4 are all very distinct from one another and actually felt like more than just bullet sponges most of the time. There were clear strategies you could employ to try and survive and take them down, which then will reward you with plenty of loot upon completion. Once you nail down how to defeat a boss and do so, you can even use Mad Moxxi’s Big Encore machine just outside of the boss fight to fight them again for a fee to farm for better weapons, which I found to be a really good strategy the later I got into the game.
Once you complete the game’s main story missions, the journey is just beginning, with the endgame being set up to keep you coming back for plenty more. As soon as you beat the story campaign with one character, you will unlock Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. This mode makes the enemies much harder, stronger, and harder to kill, but in return gives you much better loot drops as well. These enemies are no joke, so you’ll have to come up with some new strategies just to survive. As of this time, Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode has five difficulty levels that are unlocked incrementally as you complete challenges. After completing a certain amount, you’ll get to take on what is known as a Wildcard Mission that ups the difficulty even further. Mixing this in with Mad Moxxi’s Big Encore Machine gives you a lot of post-game content to come back for. The real judge will be what Gearbox does to continue supporting the game from here, but what they have provided for the endgame so far is very solid.
Backpack management is always a major part of the Borderlands series and it is once again here as well. At the start, the backpack size is relatively small, and you will have to sell or drop items regularly. Thankfully, you can earn SDU points in the game by finding various collectibles and completing certain missions that provide them. From there, you can go into the menu and look at Storage Deck Upgrades and choose how you want to spend your points. The most important of these is going to be your backpack, so definitely aim to level it up earlier if you can. From there, I tried to focus on my favorite weapons of choice so that I could hold more ammo at a time. You can also update things like your Bank, where you can store additional items, and the Lost Loot area, which puts loot you miss picking up and can get later. If you are not one who is picking up loot often and probably missing some higher-quality items, this might be one worth leveling up as well.
As for the collectibles that you can collect in the game to earn SDU, there are plenty to be found across the map in Borderlands 4. The good news is that the icons for most of these are littered all over the map, so it’s very easy to set a pin on top of it and be guided to each one. Some of the easier ones to find are the ECHO Logs, Dead Bolts, and Vault Symbols, which you just have to find and interact with. Propaganda Speakers require you to hack into them and then send waves of enemies at you before completion. The Evocarium was interesting too, as you find the pedestal for them and interact with it, which then shoots three yellow beams of light towards these yellow orbs that you must go to and interact with before returning to the initial pedestal and activating it again.
The most annoying, though, are the Lost Capsules, which require you to not only find them, but then run them back to a base and decrypt them. Usually, you don’t have to go that far so it’s not a big deal. However, some of them require you to go a much larger distance, and you become super limited in what you can do. You cannot use your vehicle and you cannot grapple, but you can technically shoot your gun. That is, you can only shoot it without aiming. If you try to press L2 to aim, that will cause it to be thrown. . Pretty much all you can do is walk, run, jump, and glide for traversal. Otherwise, you lose the item you are holding. You can throw the item if necessary, but doing anything else will cause you to drop it immediately.
You can’t have a Borderlands game and not have to talk about the bugs, because they are almost always one of the biggest flaws of the game. Unfortunately, Borderlands 4 does not buck this trend, instead still having plenty of bugs that still need to be ironed out, though thankfully, the development team is working hard to fix many of these. The most common bugs that occurred to me were ones that would lead to a mission not being able to be completed or a collectible not being able to be obtained due to not having an interactable object like there is supposed to be or something similar. This required me to quit the game and rejoin, so I could do what couldn’t be done before. The downside is you are not always spawned right there, and it’s an annoyance that really shouldn’t be in the game as often as it is. One of the Propaganda Speaker collectibles I remember in particular kept glitching and getting stuck at 25% of hacking, and I had to restart to get that to work. The good thing is that there was never a bug that a quick restart didn’t immediately fix.
Verdict
Borderlands 4 delivers on exactly what it sets out to do: give players countless hours of fun killing enemies and picking up loot while surrounded by an interesting enough story. Some of the main concerns from the previous entry have been fixed here by making some larger-scale changes to the traversal and the gameplay of the different Vault Hunters. Even with the expected bugs that come with a Borderlands game, Borderlands 4 is yet another fantastic entry in the series that is a definite improvement over the third and hopefully will only continue to get better with additional content in the future.
Score: 8.5/10
Pros:
- More balanced tone
- Fun to play as new Vault Hunters
- Grapple hook and glide abilities
- Well designed world and story
Cons:
- Gameplay is relatively the same on a base level
- Fetch quest carrying missions
- Typical Borderlands bugs
Borderlands 4 was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.
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