When Borderlands 4 was first announced at Gamescom 2024, my immediate thought was, “Oh God, it’s too soon. Please take the time to bring the franchise back to its former glory.” Despite Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands having a decent story, character creator, and enjoyable Gunplay, it still felt like the Borderlands franchise was going in the wrong direction. For many fans, the last true Borderlands was Borderlands 2; Borderlands 3 had enjoyable gunplay, but the story felt childish and like a bad TV sitcom where it was one punch line after another.
At PAX West 2025, we had the chance to meet with Gearbox and 2K to preview Borderlands 4 on PC and Nintendo Switch 2. From that preview, we stated that Borderlands 4 was a return to form and felt like the true spiritual successor to Borderlands 2. Not knowing where the story would take us, we hoped that Borderlands 4 would undo a lot of the issues that emerged from Borderlands 3. So, did the latest iteration live up to expectations, or did it become a mindless, looter shooter doomed to fall into the endless void of game clones? Find out in our Borderlands 4 review.
Borderlands 4
Developer: Gearbox
Publisher: 2K
Platforms: PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. Nintendo Switch 2 Coming Soon
Release Date: September 11th, 2025 /NS2 TBA
Players: 1 – 4
Price: $69.99
Before we talk about the Gameplay of Borderlands 4, we should focus on the game’s story and side missions. Borderlands 4‘s story returns to the dark tone that Borderlands 2 established.
Rather than corporate corruption and greed displayed by Handsome Jack being the primary antagonistic focus, BL4 focuses more on the dystopian belief of what if no one had absolute freewill. The overarching enemy, The Time Keeper, gives a big brother vibe with his ability to control anyone who has a bolt and see what they see; he is always watching.
Rather than taking down two annoying influencers, the new generation of vault hunters (Vex, Amon, Rafa, and Harlowe) are tasked with taking down the wannable god after breaking out of prison and freeing the people of Kairos from the time keepers’ oppression. In order to accomplish this mission, they must collect the three command bolts from the Time Keepers’ Commanders.
The main story of Borderlands 4 has the dark tone that we know and love; however, some comedic elements remain, but are drastically dialed back compared to Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.
Most of the comedic moments fall in the side quests that Vault Hunters can pick up along the way. These side quests can range from a “farmer” who really loves threshers to rogue AI guns that need to be caught and stopped to save a town.
As the story is concerned, it feels almost like a soft reset of the franchise, trying to undo some of the wrongs from BL3. The Vault Hunters from Borderlands 3 that appear in Borderlands 4 still have a prominent role and do not feel like cheesy canon fodder.
Not all the characters return to Borderlands 4, as we can tell, but that does not mean we will not see them down the line when events or DLC are released.
Borderlands 4 is an open-world game that has very minimal loading screens; these loading screens primarily occur when going into a vault, traveling to a boss arena, or when first spawning into the world.
Yes, there can be stuttering when going into a new area, but that falls more on console/PC performance than the actual game. The game does have some questionable optimization issues on PC, but adjusting your settings can easily resolve them, allowing you to enjoy smooth gameplay.
BL4 returns to the Looter Shooter aspects that we know and love, allowing for gear goblins to farm the best possible gear by taking on bosses repeatedly. Borderlands 4 brings a lot of quality-of-life features that other games have instituted, which Borderlands 3 left out.
Vehicle summons, waypoints, loot organizers, and weapon modification make the game more enjoyable and less like a chore. The grappling hook and improved sliding make moving in BL4 much more enjoyable and feel like Destiny 2‘s fluid movement system.
Badass Ranks have returned, but are now called specialization and only apply to the character you are playing as. The game also features a new gear modification system called Firmware Transfer that allows you to transfer firmware from one piece of gear to another; though this can be helpful, it is limited to only one attempt at transferring.
Ultimate Vault Hunter has been reworked and no longer requires you to replay through the story on a harder difficulty to unlock better loot. Instead, the game has instituted Wild Card missions (Similar to Nightfalls in Destiny 2).
Moxxi’s encore and big encore allow Vault Hunters to rechallenge bosses that they have vanquished, but for a price; the basic version of Moxxi’s Big Encore costs the player money, but the Big Encore, which is weekly, costs Eridum.
While the gunplay and movement have improved in Borderlands 4, the game is not without issues. During our playthrough, our skill tree would constantly reset with each level up until hitting level 38; this meant resetting skills sometimes in the middle of combat or at inopportune times, which could be a headache.
Borderlands 4 also features a wide variety of bugs that can range from a minor inconvenience to a massive headache. In our playthrough, there were times were we would get stuck in an infinite loading screen if teleporting to another player.
Although it is not considered a bug, the player’s map progress does not carry over between play sessions. This caused an issue where we got stuck for hours on a separate island, unable to escape until joining a friend. This can also be an issue where certain objects in your world remain at their original design, despite being modified based on story progression.
Another big issue is the game’s issue showing cosmetics, comparing gear, and even scrapping gear. The game would randomly apply filters to the equipment inventory slots, making it next to impossible to see.
In order to get around this, we would need to look at the backpack and compare the stats directly compared to side by side. When attempting to junk gear, sometimes the game would not apply the junk indicator to the appropriate piece of gear, causing it to be scrapped completely.
In one instance, a piece of gear was accidentally scrapped because of this issue, but still remained in our inventory weapon slot, locking the weapon slot; this caused us to be unable to switch between weapons without accessing the weapon wheel.
Borderlands 4’s graphics are a bit of an improvement compared to prior games in the franchise, but the cell shading packets can cause the game to stutter or take a long time to load.
The voice acting and the music in the game are an improvement compared to the last two games, and you can feel the range of emotions from the main characters to the one-off bosses.
The story itself has returned to its dark themes, but still has comedic moments at a better pacing comparable to Borderlands 2. Each character has its own unique playstyle, feel, and personality; the game fails by not offering many unique cosmetics for each character, but that can be rectified at a later point.
The gameplay can be a bit challenging when playing solo, depending on how you build your character, but Borderlands was never truly meant to be a solo experience. The matchmaking in the game is not as effective as it needs to be, but you can easily find people either in Discord or Looking for Group posts.
Now that we survived the wasteland of Borderlands 4, we can say that our original impression from PAX West 2025 held true. The gameplay is refined and feels like a modern looter shooter due to the quality of life improvements that Borderlands 3 neglected. Overall, Borderlands 4 is a true return to form that Borderlands 2 established and is the actual spiritual successor that Borderlands 3 wishes it could have been.
Borderlands 4 was reviewed on a PC using a code provided by 2K. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Borderlands 4 is now available on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.
