Borderlands 4 Review - A 9/10 game!
REVIEWSAUTHOR - 2099 GAMING
2099Gaming
9/27/20253 min read
Borderlands 4 simply outclasses its predecessors in every way. Let’s get to the malarkey. Not gonna spoil the story but to sum it up you are a vault hunter tasked with setting it off on the time keeper. Clap trap is still as hilarious as ever and the new character designs are straight up wicked.
Gameplay
The gameplay is polished tenfold from previous games. This time around you’ll need to be quicker and address firefights with a more pronounced level of strategy as the enemies get stronger.
This game really pushes you towards elemental builds with some enemies being super sponges to regular bullets but instantly getting melted by fire or corrosion. Movement is snappier and you will spend a lot of time jumping and dashing and even ducking for cover.
Gunplay is crisp and every gun feels different. I wish there was more emphasis on building the kind of arsenal you prefer tho. Later in the game instead of using an assault rifle that fires rapidly with corrosion damage I had to settle for a slow pistol because it was the only corrosion weapon I had. Wish we had more control over weapon crafting.
Each vault hunter excels at certain things. I played as Vex and really enjoyed the nuanced skill tree and variety of powers at your disposal. Tons of main mission variety and different biomes to explore. Enemy variety was also very good. Side missions became super repetitive to the point I just went into the final battle under leveled and didn’t wanna be bothered with them any more.
Graphics
Borderlands quirky cartoony graphical style shines bright on current gen consoles! It’s the graphical style u expect from this series but more polished in Unreal Engine 5. Environments look great, characters look great, everything looks great. Had some textures late to load in on the main menu character model and on trash and other minuscule items in the environment but that was the full extent of graphical miscues.
Story - 38 hours of entertainment
Story is super subjective so I can’t tell u whether or not you would like the story. It kept me entertained for 38 hours of my play through of the campaign. It wasn’t overly cheesy with bad jokes. It was a lot of seriousness with some charm sprinkled in.
Performance - The Elephant in the Room
I did have frame drops and occasional stutter while playing co-op at launch and I experienced frame drops in the later missions towards the end of the game when they just threw every enemy possible at you and it was tons of stuff going on. Did not happen much through out my play through but it was there.
I had a mostly smooth experience and I have streamed the game and posted tons of videos showing such. Apparently there is memory leak and tons of problems on others peoples watch but that wasn’t my experience.
In a Nutshell
Positives
Gameplay is phenomenal
Tons of weapons
Tons of vault hunter build variety
Easy drop in drop out co-op
Art Style
Negatives
Unreal 5 stutter in co op
Frame drops in coop
Too many enemies in the late game tank the frame rate
Side quests can become tedious fetch quests
Conclusion
9 out of 10 - Definitely a Maximum Must play.
All the negatives were things that were few and far between and didn’t really affect the gameplay consistently for me. Borderlands 4 is definitely the best looter shooter this generation and I’d dare to say it’s the pinnacle of its genre.
