Borderlands 4 Review: Best Looter-Shooter Game in 2025

Borderlands 4 is the brave choice to bring back the adored series. More than 50 hours deep in the alien world of Kairos, I’m stoked to report that this is the most polished iteration yet. The game has great gunplay, cutting-edge movement mechanics, and a fully fleshed-out open world. But it does fall short with narrative delivery and technical hiccups that prevent it from becoming unmissable.

What Makes Borderlands 4 Different?

The latest Gearbox Software installment takes the series in a brave direction. It keeps the looter-shooter madness of Borderlands that fans love, but adds some smart evolutions to bring the entire experience up several notches. Transitioning to an actual open world also marks the largest change in franchise history.

A True Open World on Kairos

Borderlands games up to now have been a series of isolated areas linked by loading screens. Borderlands 3 added planetary travel but otherwise stayed within that same structure. Gearbox, in their new installment, went on to assure the fans that the entire new world design will be open without any loading breaks. The world of Kairos is not only large but diverse as well; the players could visit the farm, the desert, or the high, jagged mountains.

We had to redesign our core game systems to accommodate this new layout. Loot tables, enemy spawns, quest construction, and travel system all needed tweaking. The result is a world that truly feels expansive without sacrificing the series’ distinctive personality.

Revolutionary Movement and Combat

Borderlands 4 brings all-new ways to move. Vault Hunters can now sprint out of the battlefield, change direction massively, and do ground slams to knock enemies off their feet. With these wrinkles, battles become acrobatic shootouts where spin makes all the difference.

The absence of fall damage is a real boon to experimentation. Players jump off enormous cliffs, fly over canyons, and slide across walls in any direction. This design mentality one gains by respecting the player and not trying to needlessly limit their use of mechanics based on contrived things.

Almost any location can spawn the Digirunner vehicle, so it’s quick and easy to explore around. At a lot of other games, where vehicles tend to be clumsy and slightly incorrect feeling somehow in the way they respond to control inputs (even if subtly so), this hoverbike propels itself with grace over a variety of surfaces.

Gunplay Reaches Peak Performance

The gunplay in Borderlands 4 is more taut than ever before. Weapons have nice weight, and recoil patterns are great. The feedback of enemy damage will make every shot feel like it is doing something. Different combat situations help space out engagements during the long campaign.

Creativity is taken to an absurd extreme, with new weapon combinations. The procedural generation spits out guns that shouldn’t work, but somehow they come full circle. From shotguns to assault rifles, both types of weapons have their own tactical uses.

The Borderlands 4 Story: Old Ground on Redemption Is Tricky

The game is set to take players to the lethal planet of Kairos, where Nova Force Marine is kidnapped by an alien race that threatens all of humanity. A new bunch of Vault Hunters are the first to find a trip to the treasure, but they get involved in turmoil instead.

Meeting The Timekeeper

The central villain—The Timekeeper—comes off as nothing more than a golden-hued tyrant terrorizing and manipulating Kairos. When your character is finally caught and sold into slavery, it becomes the catalyst for revolution. The setup will be familiar to any fan of Borderlands: come for loot, stay to liberate the planet.

The Timekeeper is a solid enough villain for the franchise. He actually feels threatened, being likened to Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2. This character gets the most incredible voice acting, which shines through in every scene.

Three Memorable Generals

The Timekeeper’s lieutenants provide the game with its strongest narrative beats. Idolator Sol, the greedy first target of yours, sets up the format well. But Callis, the Ripper Queen, is perfectly chilling in her sadistic ways. The last general, Vile Lictor, forms a terrible scene where bleaker storytelling is demonstrated.

These enemies can be defeated in any order. But running the level list as recommended is a better level flow and an increase in difficulty.

Where the Story Falls Short

You’ve got more than enough in the way of strong antagonists, but nobody to anchor the broader narrative. Quest design also typically follows the same route: speak to an NPC, travel somewhere, slaughter enemies, and return for rewards. Which can all get fairly monotonous despite strong combat mechanics underpinning each mission.

The campaign’s conclusion introduces problems. A last-minute enemy materializes through no fault of their own, leading to a muddled sense of motivation and stakes. The last boss battle also seems a little tacked on as opposed to story-earned, which is a bitter taste after such a decent journey.

The side-quests are plagued by simplistic goal structures and unimpressive rewards. Some of them have fun dialogue and situations, but most boil down to plain old shooting galleries between bits of story. They still don’t really do anything with it, and there are suitably awkward voice-acting choices and animation to sap the tension.

Borderlands Characters: The Powerful Vault Hunters of the Game

So Borderlands 4 has its strongest set of playable characters in the franchise’s history, I would argue. Every Vault Hunter has their own skill tree with Action Skills. This depth of customizability allows for experimentation and lets players tailor their characters to unique play styles.

Character-class abilities feel as integrated as ever with the new movement mechanics, even more so in fact. Typing together complementary mobility options and skill trees feels great. Every playable character—regardless of whether you’re taking them solo or in co-op play—feels unique and potent.

The supporting players are more of a mixed bag. A few of the NPCs offer real laughs and sweet moments. Others just fall completely flat, despite competent voice work. Claptrap is used at a level that never feels overbearing, as it did in past games.

Loot System and Progression Improvements

As such, the core loop of shooting things, looting things, and getting more powerful is still highly addictive. Borderlands 4 brings quality-of-life changes that make farming easier, while not taking away the joy of finding (un)godly pieces of loot.

The Encore Machine Revolution

The new system takes aim at issues that have irritated fans for a long time. Players will spend less time grinding for specific types of loot. This balance is much better than in Borderlands 3, and I hope they lean into the direction of making it easier to access, but keep that sense of finally getting something rare.

Gun businesses come back with new models. And while early-game ones are less electrifying than some returning favorites. But that doesn’t matter because the late-game variety of the armory makes up for it with genuinely creative firearms that stomp on mechanical boundaries.

Managing the Loot Tsunami

The large number of drops can be overwhelming. Even well-rolled weapons can quickly become meaningless when hidden under a pile of dozens of purple and orange objects. The game offers sorting functions, but inventory management is still a chore during long stints.

That said, finding the perfect guns for your build is genuinely thrilling. Now and then, the procedural generation will throw up combinations that are legendary enough to change entire play styles.

Taken (Mostly) Seriously: The Open World Is Called Kairos, and It’s Worth a Visit

Kairos pings into existence, looking a hell of a lot like any other to-do-list-infested open world. For those who take a little time to look, the planned structure can be easily seen, and it’s well worth digging into. They’re not much other than the means through which you find hidden things, that not only grant you loot but also a series of enjoyable events/environmental storytelling to notice and/or interact with, and thereby rendering it easier for later reads.

Regions vary in visual representation and gameplay features. The pastoral areas provide breathing room between the intense combat segments. Deserts will test your survival skills with adverse conditions and aggressive opponents. Mountainous areas challenge players with vertical puzzle-solving.

Navigation Challenges

Some reviewers found exploration frustrating. The world itself can feel as though it’s constructed solely to repel any notion of easy traversal, with artificial obstacles running contrary to the freedom that is ostensibly offered by fresh movement kits. Once in a while, the automated GPS would project wayward directions that we’d be at a loss to achieve.

Not bad enough to ruin the whole experience, but just enough to cause some friction where there doesn’t need to be any. Navigation issues may be fixed when the game updates, though anyone who plows in at launch should occasionally feel lost.

Technical Performance, the Big Elephant in The Room

Tales from the Borderlands 4 with massive optimization issues on all platforms. You can’t dismiss these issues when looking at the entire package.

PC Performance Struggles

The things are such that most PCs are not capable of functioning well with Unreal Engine 5. In case your computer meets the recommended specifications, you will still get stuttering and tearing of your graphics. Some gamers point out the frame rate dropping under 60 for a short time in a fight scenario.

Updating drivers and releasing a patch on day one made some improvements, but only a small fraction. Nevertheless, to ensure smooth performance, the users need to have hardware that goes beyond the requirements stated, thus resulting in accessibility issues for a large number of potential players.

Console Optimization Issues

Sony condemned the problems identified in base PlayStation 5 testing. I encountered one memory glitch that caused the frame rate to drop intermittently, and consequently, the game performance was below standard for a long time. I found the performance downgrade from over 60 FPS to around 35 after 3-4 hours of play at most.

The only fix was starting the game over multiple times with a restart to ensure decent frames. This is a tedious workaround for a 2025 full-price offering, especially during extended gaming sessions.

Some issues were patched post-launch, but overall performance remains spotty. Gamers shouldn’t expect same-day patches until further in the process.

Borderlands 4 Release Date, Platforms Available

The latest installment of the Borderlands game was released in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam). You can still play the first Borderlands on PC (Steam, and maybe other places).

The news arrives after years of anticipation since Borderlands 3 redefined the modern expectations for a returning series. When was Borderlands 3 released? That game launched in 2019, so a Borderlands 4 would be quite the wait for dedicated fans.

Borderlands 2 characters and Borderlands 1 characters are two of the many high-profile predecessors that have already set the bar for the series. Every game also came with a memorable cast of characters for the fans to fall in love with and which would become fan favorites going forward.

Comparing to Previous Entries

Borderlands 3 vs Borderlands 4

Borderlands 3 review scores have praised its improved gunplay and selection of worlds. The sequel builds on that premise and addresses some lingering criticisms. Combat snaps more than in Fallout, loot systems feel more balanced, and the great wide open is far less meant for exploration.

By contrast, Borderlands 3 had a solid story despite some divisive villains. The Calypso Twins were controversial, but they had a story and stuck to it. The fight encapsulates a story that Borderlands 4 ditches all for the sake of more intense gunplay.

Learning from Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

The fantasy-laden spinoff proved that Gearbox could conjure a riveting narrative within the Borderlands universe. It was a lighthearted hero’s journey and struck the right balance of somber to silly. Borderlands 4 is more jaded, falling back onto tired sci-fi backdrops that never come close to the energy of Wonderlands’ writing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict: What Is There to Be Said That Borderlands 4 Hasn’t Already Done for Us?

As a looter-shooter, Borderlands 4 is outstanding. This, the glistening gunplay with new and refined movement mechanics and a progression system that actually feels rewarding, equals the best gameplay this franchise has ever seen. QoL adjustments to cut the irritable bits, but without much/any loss of depth.

The transition from a more directed design toward an open world is largely successful, if not for some navigation hiccups. Kairos is eclectic and secret-y enough to warrant a serious snoop. Side activities provide entertaining distractions in between main story missions.

Some technical and story problems make the recommendation not unconditional. There is the tradeoff, though: Players will have to weigh consistently exceptional moment-to-moment gameplay against Eternal’s nagging optimization problems and forgettable storytelling.

It’s the series at its best when it matters, for fans who are devoted. The highs are so very high, and the lows? Well, the lows can be so much better—or at least anywhere, an experience that is part of the franchise tradition and a complete propulsion of it forward in some very big ways.

That’s a lot to ask for new Borderlands games. This article checks most of the relevant boxes, getting perhaps a little less than a check on some. As technical hiccups are patched over, the whole package will be refined. Even at launch, that core provides dozens of hours of chaotic, loot-strewn enjoyment.

There’s a robust Borderlands experience on offer for Steam and console players here, if you’re the kind that values gameplay over story polish and can cope with some performance wobbles. It’s a swaggering, masterful evolution of everything the series does well.