Borderlands 4: Compact Thoughts

Borderlands 4 does not need an introduction. It’s a well known franchise that has ups and downs but always has the ability to bring people back for more. I have only played Borderlands 2 & Borderlands 3. Both games were played at a very casual level of playing until credits rolled and moving onto the next journey when they were released. Both times I had enjoyed what I played but it seems the 3rd game in the mainline series had an underwhelming impression on players. Which led me to wonder if this game could bring back those players.

After spending thirty two and some minutes going through the campaign and various side missions, I think this game delivered. If we focus primarily on the shooting and looting it's a ten out of ten experience. The constant dopamine you get from defeating scraggly enemies to big badasses then looting their mangled, bullet sponged bodies never seems to get old. In a way I felt teleported back to those previous experiences playing the other mainline titles. There’s something about this gameplay loop that scratches a familiar itch you forget you have until it happens. But I couldn’t help but notice the same enemies over and over with weak combat intelligence. I played on normal so enemies might be more dynamic on the harder difficulty.

While the gameplay felt amazing, the story felt normal and serviceable when I analyzed it from story beat to story beat. There are many characters within the story that shine very bright from allies to villains. The dialogue writing of these characters are done well, the game does possess lines that should give most players a chuckle here and there. It also feels as if they toned on comedy, from my limited memory it felt like Borderlands always had quips lurking with each line. I am overall indifferent to the change if that's the case because I believe it may bring in more players. 

Transitioning back to gameplay I do want to mention the environmental layout as Borderlands 4 is open world on a singular map with a few unique exceptions. The environments were not distinct enough for me, if I didn’t open up my mini map constantly I do not believe I could get around purely on visual context pathways they have laid down. A part of me ignored it after time passed and just focused on how much fun I was having playing Harlowe, one of the playable characters offered to you on the select screen. Due to the amount of mobs thrown at you Harlowe became an excellent character choice as her main skill of shooting a nuclear fission bomb allowed me to swipe out entire squadrons. Her ability also allowed me to wipe out bosses nearly instantly towards the very end of the main campaign. 

Now transitioning back to narrative there’s only one aspect that bothered me which was the Time Keeper’s (Main Bad Guy) role during the campaign. He had an interesting premise and his constant taunting throughout the levels from his high castle made putting him down so much easier. But he never feels like an omnipresent threat even though he presents himself as such. The Time Keeper presents himself as an evil force seeking to be evil just because he has the time. I found his three key generals to be way more interesting, thankfully they are your main focus for eighty percent of the game. 

The last thing I will touch on is the performance issues as it was a major problem at launch for other players on PC (the platform I played on) and on consoles. I am thankful that my NVIDIA 4080 GPU was able to run the game with adjusted medium settings, but should that be the case? Just comparing other games built on the Unreal Engine such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on nearly all high settings I was able to keep a constant one hundred and twelve frames per second. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has more character density, animations and environmental effects if I compare it to Borderlands 4. I believe that long term they may be able to fix their optimization issues but it's so hard to recommend the game when I can’t be sure if when I recommend this game it will even fire up properly.