Borderlands 4 PC Review
Summary: Borderlands 4 adds many new features and quality of life updates to the franchise, and along with its new open-world, makes it easily the best entry in the series.
4.6
Worth looting!
2009 was a pretty good year for games. Several big franchises released notable new instalments, with many of them going on to be lauded for years to come. Gearbox Software, most notable for several ‘Half-Life’ expansions and the ‘Brothers in Arms’ series at that point, released their new IP, Borderlands, unto the world, where it gained immediate success and acclaim.
An FPS-RPG hybrid, somewhat of a novelty at the time, with the unique selling point of having literally millions of different guns in the game.
Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and the fourth numbered entry into the franchise is due to release shortly. I spent a couple of weeks with it to see what it’s all about, how it differs from previous entries, and most importantly, to determine whether it’s any good.
Unlike the previous games, Borderlands 4 doesn’t start on the planet Pandora; instead, it sees the four new vault hunters crash onto the planet of Kairos, where they then seek to defeat the Timekeeper, the dictator in control of the planet. It’s nothing special in terms of plot or setup, but then again, that isn’t something that the franchise is especially known for anyway. It does exactly what it needs to do for the player to go nuts in a host of new locales with a big pile of guns.
The story, or rather, how the story is written and delivered, is one aspect of the games that has never really landed right with me outside of the first game. Thankfully, I found things to be a little better this time around. It spends a lot less time trying (and failing) to be funny than previous entries, and Claptrap keeps relatively quiet in Borderlands 4. Otherwise, I found the audio to be wholly unremarkable. Not bad, by any means, but other than a few snippets of music or stings that called back to previous entries, nothing that especially stood out.
The four vault hunters each fulfil a different role, simultaneously managing to be both viable in solo and as part of a group – cooperative multiplayer still being as big a part of the experience as it ever was. The only class that returns from previous games is the Siren, a staple since the very first excursion on Pandora and filled by Vex this time around.
Amon fills the role of the Forgeknight, a vaguely close-combat themed class. Harlowe is the Gravitar, a combat scientist who specialises in using her inventions to gain the upper hand. Finally, there’s Rafa, the Exo-Soldier, who has a melee focus, utilising various energy blades to rend enemies asunder.
Each character is highly customisable, both in terms of the skills that they have available, as well as visually, with each having dozens of different heads, skins, and colours to find and unlock. The skill trees are like those seen in the previous game. Characters have three trees to advance through, with each specialising in a different aspect of their character’s abilities.
For example, one of Vex’s paths allows her to summon multiple relatively weak spectral warriors that fight alongside her, while another allows her to summon one spectral beast that can hold its own a little more. These can all be switched between on the fly, and if you’ve spent sufficient time levelling them all up, they are all equally viable.
Combat itself is a typical first-person shooter affair. It does differ slightly from previous series incarnations, however. Most notably, there’s an increased emphasis on movement this time around. A bunch of new movement abilities have been added to Borderlands 4. These include a double jump, gliding, dashing, and a grappling hook. The first is self-explanatory, as is dashing, gliding. The grappling hook is where things become a little more interesting. Gliding is predominantly used to get around the world, covering long distances in the air and slowing down your descent, though that aspect of it is redundant, as there’s no fall damage, at least I never fell from anywhere high enough to give any.
It’s cool nonetheless, the map has a great deal of verticality to it, with many safehouses and landmarks being atop towering structures of huge cliff faces, and gliding down from them allows for covering great distances quickly.
Perhaps most notable of the new movement-oriented additions is the grappling hook. It allows for quick map traversal, typically used to move vertically without having to account for stairs or lifts. Unfortunately, it’s only available at preset points in the world – grapple points, but these are everywhere, so there’s always ample opportunity to use them. Grappling can also be used to pull certain objects close to the player, usually small explosive barrels that can then be thrown at enemies in combat. It doesn’t have the utility of something like lasso in ‘Bulletstorm’, but it’s a fun inclusion either way, and I made extensive use of it both in and out of combat.
The world itself has evolved alongside the movement. For the first time, Borderlands 4 is a completely seamless open world. Every one of the game’s multitude of caves, dungeons, towns, and bases is accessible without loading screens (except when fast travelling). This feels like how Borderlands was always envisioned to be, only held back by the limitations of the technology at the time. Dozens of quests and side objectives litter the map; there’s always something to do, and reasons to do it most of the time.
Gunplay is generally decent. As with the older games, the sheer number of available weapons and variations between them (apparently into the billions now) is going to mean that some land better than others. Across my playtime, I encountered some of the best and worst-feeling weapons I’ve ever encountered in a game.
The game disgorges weapons at you at an astonishing rate, though, so this is never really a problem for long. For the most part, each weapon sounds and feels good to use. Some have weaker sounds than others or do far less damage than you’d expect based on how they look, but that’s to be expected given the random nature of the system and sheer number of possibilities.
Borderlands, as a series, has always been good-looking. Leaning heavily into its art style over raw fidelity, it’s something that’s served it well over the years. From two onward, when Gearbox started to move away from the grey-brown environments of the original game, into a more saturated, colourful style.
This newest instalment is easily the best-looking Borderlands game and is in the running for one of the best-looking games ever. The visuals are a little over-sharpened for my taste, but it’s not detrimental to the game. Once again, its focus is on art style, pushing everything that made it look good before up to 11 with Unreal Engine 5.
Unfortunately, this comes with a caveat. UE5 is not known for being light, and Borderlands 4 is no exception. If you want to run this at 4K on max settings, then be prepared to make use of upscaling and frame generation. I played the game at 4K, max settings, on a 9950X3D and RTX 5090, and couldn’t maintain 60fps in the open world without enabling DLSS, and even then, it required at least 2x frame generation to always stay above it.
With that said, it does seem to scale relatively well on the GPU side of things. Turning down some settings (notably volumetric clouds) improved things substantially. It’s worth noting that I experienced frequent crashes when running at the highest settings. Most of my time with the game was without both the day one patch and a new driver from Nvidia, so by the time the game is released, things may have changed in this regard, and should anything change, I will amend the review as necessary.
Steam Deck
For now, things are looking rather bleak for anyone looking to play Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck. The game does run; however, it isn’t anything close to being a good experience. With everything on low settings, I was hitting around 20fps at best in the open world, and the visuals are degraded so much that it really wasn’t what I would consider to be playable at any level here, which is a shame, because all previous Borderlands titles were great on the Deck.
Final Thoughts?
While I undoubtedly have a soft spot for the first two games, this is without question the best Borderlands experience to date. It’s by far the best-looking entry into the series and one of the best-looking games of the year. Gunplay is tight, movement is responsive, and there are dozens of hours of stuff to do.
Gearbox has a history of supporting the titles for several years with new content after launch, and the Borderlands 4 road map looks to be no different in this regard.
Whether this is your first time with the series or you’re a series veteran, Borderlands 4 has a lot to love.
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