As funny as it may seem, Borderlands 4 is simultaneously one of the best and worst games of the year – at least until Gearbox gets a handle on optimization and forbids Randy Pitchford from sitting on Twitter.
Those unfamiliar with the Borderlands series won't understand how much work on the mistakes was done with the fourth part. After just a couple of hours of playing, you get the impression that Gearbox carefully studied the forums and actually read every letter from a fan who was annoyed by certain aspects of the previous parts in order to change or improve them in Borderlands 4. Take, for example, the plot.
An Adequate Scenario in Borderlands?!
Borderlands 4 offers a much more serious and mature story. There are idiotic jokes and absurd side quests, but they seem to be added to the game to at least brighten up the dark narrative and remind fans of what the series used to be like. Here you can go in search of a psycho who brutally kills his victims or turns them into obsessed madmen, and after a while try to convince a crank-flat-earther that the planet Kairos is a sphere. The seriousness and cruelty of this world borders well with the absurd.
Although the game takes place from Pandora to Kairos, the narrative is based on the misadventures of a quartet of dashing heroes who get into serious trouble. In an attempt to get out of trouble, they not only save their own skins, but also start events that could change the fate of the entire planet — because the inhabitants are forced to eke out a miserable existence under the heel of a cruel and power-hungry tyrant known as the Keeper of Time.
Despite the fact that the script often descends into banalities and predictable clichés, this does not prevent it from sometimes really surprising and making the player want to find out what will happen next as soon as possible. The characters do not cause dislike, as was the case in the third part. They get exactly as much screen time to allow the player to get to know them better, and then fade into the background, only occasionally appearing as an icon in the corner of the screen to throw in some exposition and shut up again. You even start to feel warm feelings for some of them and a sincere desire to help.
Yes, in some places they say real nonsense, turning into some kind of caricatures, but the plot quickly corrects the course, giving them more serious and convincing lines. The script seems to have been entrusted to interns to try their hand, but then they still invited script doctors to make the necessary corrections. The characters are also more like real people, adequately and plausibly reacting to the world and what is happening in it, and not just logs floating with the flow.
It's nice to see that some characters from previous Borderlands parts have found a place in the fourth part. Zane and Amara play an important role, providing feasible assistance to the hero and moving the plot forward. There is also Moxxi, who placed her slot machines near each boss on Kairos, which can revive for a fee, allowing you to farm legendary equipment to infinity. Moreover, you can tip Moxxi at her bar, and if you give her enough, she can give out legendary weapons as a thank you.
What has remained almost unchanged is the insanely clichéd villains, who do nothing but talk endlessly, promising to bring unimaginable suffering down on the heads of the heroes. And most of the angry monologues take place in the midst of firefights — in the noise and hubbub, it becomes completely incomprehensible what they want from us at all. Honestly, if it weren't for the subtitles, I would never have understood that the Queen of the Ripper was fervently persuading me to join her! The vile villain who is terrorizing the mountain people is no better: the plot presents him as an ingenious schemer who calculates everything several steps ahead, but at the same time he commits the most absurd acts that only further infuriate the main character.
Here and there you can see preparations for potential additions, which the scriptwriters didn't even try to hide. Some characters refuse to die, although all the circumstances are against them. Others leave something unsaid and seem to be like: "I would tell you how it will be later, but you won't buy the add-on then." It is clear that Gearbox announced plans to release add-ons for it even before the game was released, but they could at least pretend that it would be new, not cut content.
New Planet — New Rules
The most significant change was the transition of Borderlands 4 to a full-fledged open world, divided into four regions that can be freely visited without watching loading screens every 5-10 minutes. The exception is the bases of bosses and vaults, which exist outside the main map.
Kairos is really huge and interesting to explore. Question marks are constantly falling on the player, offering to explore this or that area. Sometimes it's just a camp of rogues, the clearing of which will bring pumping points — they can be spent on increasing the capacity of the backpack or the depth of pockets for cartridges. Or a launch shaft for a rocket will be found, or a cave where another boss is hiding, or an abandoned outpost. In Borderlands 4 there are a lot of these "or" — Skyrim once brought as much pleasure from exploring the world in its time. The game does not hold your hand and does not scatter marks everywhere where to go — it trusts your intelligence and completely surrenders to the power of your curiosity.
Double jumps, a jetpack and an energy whip, which can be used to pull yourself to ledges, sometimes turn the shooter into a platformer altogether. These tools also add more dynamics to skirmishes with opponents, allowing you to quickly move around them, occupying advantageous firing positions or hiding from enemy bullets, giving the shields time to recover.
The battles as a whole have become more exciting, but sometimes they are still too protracted. Borderlands 4 likes to send huge hordes of opponents to the heroes, sometimes making you think that the clashes were built taking into account the cooperative and without looking back, that someone will go through the game alone. At such moments, all the pleasure of a tense shootout quickly evaporates, replaced by a silent question: "How many of you are there?
Battles with bosses have become much more interesting — at least with the main ones. They make you follow the behavior of the villain, read his attacks and even take into account the features of the arenas: some villains like to use powerful area attacks, causing great damage and easily throwing them out of the battlefield.
Legendaries My, Legendaries!
Character leveling has become deeper and more flexible. Each hero has three main skill trees, allowing you to sharpen it for almost any style of play — if there were the right guns. The same witch Vex can summon doubles, one of which flies around the map and strikes opponents with a scythe, when the second simply stands still and pours lead on opponents. After certain investments in one of the branches, the second double can even start using the same weapon as Vex herself, and the reaper will start inflicting fiery damage with a scythe.
Various passive bonuses also enhance Vex and her minions, increasing attack power, critical damage, or armor thickness. At the same time, the player is allowed to reset skill points and try to build pumping in a different way — around the Trouble pet or completely abandon familiars, turning Vex into a real tank.
Gearbox promised an unimaginable number of guns and their variations — and you believe this promise. A huge number of machine guns, shotguns, rifles and pistols of different rarity and from different manufacturers fly out of the bosses, like from piñatas.
- High-tech weapons from Maliwan use elemental damage that ignites, freezes, melts with radiation or corrosive chemicals.
- Torgue guns tear enemies to shreds with mini-rockets.
- Strange and seemingly alien Order weapons can create local black holes.
- Daedalus offers hybrid weapons like a shotgun capable of firing sniper rifle cartridges in an alternate mode — this is very convenient if your build is built around a specific weapon that may have suddenly run out of ammo at this particular moment.
An interesting innovation was the system of licensed components, mixing the characteristic elements of various manufacturers in one weapon. The same Maliwan can install a component from Jakobs on its gun, which makes critical attacks start ricocheting off opponents. There are many combinations, and some make the guns simply dishonest towards enemies and bosses.
Special stimulants have appeared in the game, giving various buffs and restoring health. Now the pace of battles will not be interrupted when, after taking a lot of damage, you start frantically running in search of first-aid kits or other items to replenish health, while dodging bullets and grenades.
Sometimes You Better Shut Up, Randy!
The main and most serious drawback of Borderlands 4, which trivially prevents you from enjoying an excellent shooter, is optimization. It's just awful.
Which is quite strange, because visually the fourth part is almost no different from the third, and in some places even inferior to it. Cutting through Kairos, you will constantly observe the elements of the environments loading right in front of your eyes, and if more than three explosions occur in the frame at the same time, then you will be able to see the effects of Unreal Engine 5 in detail. Because at such a moment the game will turn into a slideshow.
And Borderlands 4 cannot be played for too long, because the game clearly has problems with memory leaks, due to which the longer you play it, the more it starts to slow down.
Regular bugs are also annoying. Some missions have to be rolled back to the last save: platforms could not be loaded, without which it is impossible to overcome the obstacle that has arisen in the way; some trigger for the script that opens the door or the path to the boss did not work. During the execution of one of the main story missions, we encountered an error due to which Amara only pretended to break through the wall with her fist, and then passed through it. It looked funny until I realized that I should have followed her — but there was no breach in the wall, I had to load an earlier save.
The quest may stop altogether if the soundtrack falls off. The characters, whose dialogue moved the development of the plot, will simply start staring at each other, as if playing peepers.
The problem is only exacerbated by the man himself and the Randy Pitchford steamboat, the permanent head of Gearbox, who spends more time on social networks than at work. Many players were clearly ready to turn a blind eye to the optimization of Borderlands 4 and give it a discount because of Unreal Engine 5, but Pitchford decided that only "plebeians with cheap buckets" complain about performance and bugs. The legend of the gaming industry even suggested that critics write their own engine, since they are so smart, forcing people to remember the impenetrable argument "First achieve it".
Of course, after such statements by Pitchford, even those who did not play it began to create a negative background around the game, although Borderlands 4 does not deserve this. She would have a couple of patches to fix the main problems, Randy... Think about it!
Diagnosis
Borderlands 4 is worth your time and money. Kairos is a truly huge world that is interesting to explore, with cool side activities. A deep leveling system with branching skill trees will allow you to create more than one destructive build to terrify opponents. Interesting heroes and secondary characters complement the already serious, and in some places extremely gloomy plot. A chic arsenal, combined with battles that have become much more dynamic, due to new movement mechanics, will not let you break away from the project.
But don't do it now. Wait for patches and updates, without which all the good things in the game will remain unnoticed. All impressions will be ruined by terrible optimization, with constant lags and bugs. And the holes from the cut content, which you will be sold separately, most likely next year, will only sprinkle more salt on the fresh wound.
