Gearbox Entertainment has positioned Borderlands 4 as a sort of return to form for the series in terms of its comedic storytelling, while also expanding the core loot-driven shooter formula into an open-world adventure. It’s successful on the gameplay front, but wildly misses in its approach to humor. For a game that presents itself as an irreverent comedy looter-shooter that lasts dozens of hours, that’s not a very good hit rate.
The game reminded me that this series is still an industry leader in terms of game feel and loot design, as it’s easy to have fun losing dozens of hours grinding missions to find better and unique guns that you could then continue the cycle with. The open world design enhances all of those great things about the Borderlands formula.
But its narrative and comedy totally miss the mark, dropping any sort of timing or meaningful setups for a flurry of uninspired punchlines. Borderlands 4 is worth playing if you’re looking for a new game to grind for loot in, but not if you’re interested in it for the narrative, lore, or comedy.
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OpenCritic Reviews
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Top Critic Avg:
84/100
Critics Rec:
96%
- Released
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September 12, 2025
- ESRB
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Rating Pending
- Developer(s)
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Gearbox Software
- Publisher(s)
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2K
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
Borderlands 4 brings intense action, badass Vault Hunters, and billions of wild and deadly weapons to an all-new planet ruled by a ruthless tyrant.
Crash into Kairos as one of four new Vault Hunters seeking wealth and glory. Wield powerful Action Skills, customize your build with deep skill trees, and dominate enemies with dynamic movement abilities.
Break free from the oppressive Timekeeper, a ruthless dictator who dominates the masses from on high. Now a world-altering catastrophe threatens his perfect Order, unleashing mayhem across the planet.
Ignite a resistance and blast your way through mechanical monstrosities, bloodthirsty bandits, and vicious beasts. Amass an arsenal of death-dealing firepower to wreak havoc as you tear your way across Kairos.
Fight solo or in co-op with up to three other players in this immense sci-fi adventure, packed with free-form combat and exploration, pulse-pounding boss fights, infinitely varied loot drops, and an eclectic cast of unforgettable characters new and old.
- Farming for loot is more enjoyable than ever
- Kairos is a well-designed open world
- Each Vault Hunter feels fresh and fun to play
- New movement options make battles more thrilling
- Almost none of its jokes are funny
- It’s impossible to take its story seriously
- Vault Hunters aren’t memorable as characters
Price and Availability
Borderlands 4 is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X. It launches for Nintendo Switch 2 on October 3. The base game costs $70, which is typical of a modern AAA game and provides the player with dozens of hours of content. A $100 Deluxe Edition and $130 Super Deluxe Edition are also available on all platforms for those who want to pre-purchase its post-launch DLC.
Borderlands 4 is a comedy of errors
By that, I mean that it makes a lot of errors in its approach to comedy
The only thing that’s hilarious about Borderlands 4 is how painfully unfunny most of its dialogue is. It attempts to maintain the series’ tongue-in-cheek tone as it tells a new story about Vault Hunters taking on a planet-controlling tyrant called the Timekeeper on a brand-new planet called Kairos. The game is spent recruiting an eclectic cast of old and new characters to your resistance, all while the Timekeeper and many of his underlings taunt you.
Borderlands 3 relied too heavily on meme culture for its humor, so Gearbox really tried to walk the humor back and deliver more original jokes. Unfortunately, the game just never does a very good job at that. While almost every other line of dialogue in some missions is meant to be a joke or a quip, none are even chuckle-worthy.
The only time I laughed while playing was when I saw a challenge named “Not Now, Kitten.” In retrospect, that was exactly the kind of internet reference the developers intentionally tried to avoid in Borderlands 4, which proves that this game’s approach to comedy was not for me.
Humor is ultimately subjective, so you may laugh at more jokes than I did. However, I do think the game still has some fundamental issues regarding its comedic tone and timing. Comedy is all about proper timing, as delicately crafted setups can lead to perfectly timed punchlines. As an open-world adventure where players can approach any challenge from angle, Gearbox loses all control over the timing.
2K
That lack of control over timing then puts a lot of pressure on the writing itself, which I didn’t find up to snuff. The funniest games find ways to incorporate humor into the gameplay, using the timing of each mission or level to maximize its comedic effect. Think Portal 2 or Grim Fandango. In Borderlands 4, it feels like every character is just spouting their unfunny jokes at you nonstop. I gave the narrative time in the hopes that it would get funnier the more I played. The opposite happened, though, and I just started to tune almost all the dialogue out.
There are enough attempts at jokes to mess with the tone when Borderlands 4 is trying to be serious, so I never took any of the campaign’s threats very seriously. As both a drama and a comedy, the game fails. That means the looter-shooter gameplay has to do a lot of heavy lifting.
Borderlands 4 masters the looter shooter formula
The gameplay is a whole lot better than the writing
Outside its irreverent humor and vibrant art style, the original Borderlands’ claim to fame was that it codified the looter-shooter genre. It took loot systems from games like Diablo and incorporated them into a first-person shooter experience where players are constantly farming enemies and missions to look for better and better guns.
While Borderlands 4’s jokes could use some more refinement, this system is better than ever here. Gearbox understands how to disperse loot at just a fast-enough rate to keep me enthralled as a player and finds ways to make each and every gun feel distinct from each other. Legendary drops are also much rarer here than in Borderlands 3, which makes finding one particularly special.
Still, I never got comfortable with a single loadout. Instead, I was always looking for new ways to adjust my character build. Each of Borderlands 4’s Vault Hunters plays distinctly from the others. I liked playing as Amon the best, as I found ways to upgrade his tank abilities to make him a near-invincible character when I activated his shields properly.
I only feel like I scratched the surface of messing around with each character’s action skills and skill tree upgrades, too, so there’s a lot of runway there for learning to master every character. While I wish I cared about the Vault Hunters individually a bit more as characters (their personalities also suffer from the lack of good writing), from a gameplay perspective, they offer more than enough to keep me hooked.
Borderlands 4 effectively makes the transition to an open-world game
Exploring Kairos feels great
2K
Previously, Borderlands games were more linear, or locked players into smaller hub-like levels. Borderlands 4 goes full open-world, clearly taking inspiration from Destiny 2. While this did disable Gearbox’s ability to properly time jokes, there are tangible benefits in many other aspects of the game. Namely, there’s always something new or interesting to do.
Several hours into the game, I was still stumbling on new areas and side quests that I had no idea even existed before. Kairos’ biomes are distinct from one another, leaning into the vibrant, comic book-like aesthetics the series is known for to create areas that look as interesting as they are to explore.
Dynamic events are also peppered just enough around the open world to keep the endgame engaging. This open-ended structure also allowed Gearbox to improve the feel of combat. Shooting a gun still feels great, but players now have more options as they can hover, glide, or double jump right in the middle of battle.
This makes gunfights much less boring and opens up the opportunity for more movement and endurance-driven boss design, which is something Borderlands has only flirted with in the past. While I didn’t play Borderlands 4 in co-op, this sandbox also feels tailor-made to support that, as well as the planned live service post-launch support.
Borderlands 4 is an enjoyable game, let down by its attempts at comedy
Fun, rather than funny
2K
Borderlands 4 might not be able to tell a good joke, but it knows how to deliver an immensely captivating open-world shooter experience. Borderlands 4 has one of the best-feeling loot grinds of any loot-driven game that I’ve played recently. The improved movement options will make it difficult to go back and play previous games in the series.
While PC players were reporting some performance issues, I never ran into any on Xbox Series X. As such, I can recommend this console version of Borderlands 4 if you’re purely looking for a new shooter with enough content for you and your friends to sink lots of hours into. It’s just a shame that you’ll probably want to tune out all the dialogue you hear while doing so.
Borderlands 3 may have been cringe rather than funny, but I think that’s a bit better than outright failing at comedy like Borderlands 4 does. That’s an unavoidable and major blemish for a game that’s supposed to be a comedic shooter. Thankfully, the first-person shooter parts of the game are better than ever.
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OpenCritic Reviews
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Top Critic Avg:
84/100
Critics Rec:
96%
- Released
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September 12, 2025
- ESRB
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Rating Pending
- Developer(s)
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Gearbox Software
- Publisher(s)
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2K
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
