Borderlands 4

I came into Borderlands 4 with the kind of exhausted skepticism most RPG-adjacent loot obsessives carry after Borderlands 3 left a bad taste. Gearbox heard the same criticism everyone was shouting: tone down the meme humor, fix the bullet-sponge bosses, give us a villain worth hating. They did all of that. The Timekeeper, the dictator ruling the newly revealed planet Kairos, is a genuinely compelling antagonist, the kind who makes the conflict feel urgent rather than performative. He is not Handsome Jack, and the game does not pretend he is, but he earns his place in the franchise's gallery of memorable enemies in a way the Calypso Twins never managed. The movement system is the headline mechanical improvement, and it earns that billing. From the moment you drop onto Kairos you have a double jump, air dash, and wall-climbing, and you unlock a grapple hook and glide pack shortly after. Traversal goes from a footnote to a genuine joy, with dungeons and side areas designed around vertical play in ways previous entries never attempted. The new Licensed Parts system for weapons is equally smart: guns now carry traits from multiple manufacturers, so a Vladof rifle might have Daedalus parts that let it function as two weapon types simultaneously, and a Jakobs shotgun might carry Maliwan elemental riders. The permutation space is enormous and genuinely interesting to think about, not just a numbers inflation. The four launch Vault Hunters, Amon, Harlowe, Rafa, and Vex, cover different fantasies without feeling generic. Amon is the melee juggernaut, throwing elemental axes with Crucible or slamming a hammer for fiery AoE with Onslaughter. Rafa the Exo-Soldier is the versatile run-and-gun pick, toggling between shoulder-mounted Peacebreaker Cannons, a charged APOPHIS Lance arm cannon, and Arc Knives for close-range shock damage. Vex is the Siren summoner, fielding a scythe-wielding Reaper or a gun-toting Specter via Dead Ringer, with her Phase Covenant passive automatically syncing her ability elements to whatever weapon she holds. Each hunter has three full skill trees with Capstone abilities, respecs are accessible, and the build variety genuinely holds up past the campaign. The endgame Specialization system, which unlocks after credits roll, extends that further with passive slot customization. There is real depth here for people who like thinking about it, not just executing it. The caveats are real, though. The narrative, while far less irritating than its predecessor, swings too far toward restraint. Side quests are frequently dull filler that exist mainly to keep your level on pace with the main story, which is a design problem the series has never fully solved. The PC launch was rougher than it should have been for a triple-A release, with reports of crashes, save corruption, and performance instability on certain configurations. Patches have addressed much of this since launch, and the Metacritic score of 81 reflects the consensus that when it works, it works well, but the launch state matters if you are buying close to release. Co-op, whether online with crossplay or couch split-screen, remains the mode where everything clicks hardest: the vault hunters have genuine dialogue when playing together, the chaos scales properly, and boss farming through the Moxxi's Encore replay feature gives squads a natural endgame loop. Borderlands 4 is the best the series has felt to play, full stop. It just needs a stronger story and cleaner side content to match its mechanical ambition.

Monika · Scout Team

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