Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Played on: PlayStation 5
My spouse and I have a long history of playing the Borderlands series together via split-screen couch co-op. We’ve traversed Pandora and beyond, blasted hundreds of bandits, and laughed at the humorous world and memorable characters.
Borderlands 4 represents a major jetpack-leap forward, taking players to the all-new planet of Kairos. The new open world design is a big change, and not an unwelcome one, and the intersection of Vault Hunter abilities with the incredible variety of randomized weapons and gear help drive the insatiable quest for better gear and bigger challenges.
Read on for our co-op review of Borderlands 4!
Open Borders
Despite its excellent gameplay, Borderlands 3 was justifiably criticized for its lackluster story, particularly its eye-rolling influencer villains.
I’m pleased to report that the writing and overall story is vastly improved in Borderlands 4 (though still not nearly as good as Borderlands 2). Kairos introduces a cast of almost entirely new characters. It’s a bold choice given the wide range of heavily developed fan favorites, but unburdening from Pandora’s crew was the right call. New characters such as Rush and Zadra are much more serious, while still endearing and likable.
We particularly enjoyed how much our own Vault Hunters spoke up during quests. The Vault Hunters are usually a silent bunch, but Borderlands 4 really expands their personalities, providing fun back-and-forth comments in every quest, from Amon’s stoic, dramatic warrior poet, to Vex’s biting sarcasm. In co-op, whichever character begins the quest, or is closest to the next dialogue sequence, gets to speak, allowing multiple Vault Hunters to chime in over the course of a cooperative campaign.
Open-world games often struggle with pacing and storytelling, and Borderlands 4 doesn’t really fix these issues. The big bad evil guy, the Timekeeper, could be attacking our friendly local hideout, but we’re free to explore in other directions as long as we want. And there’s a lot to explore.
Kairos is delightfully huge, with a nice balance of side quests, collectibles, treasures, and action-packed events, such as defending against waves of enemies at radio towers, or defeating randomized world bosses. We even get to enter actual vaults throughout the story, and defeat nasty bosses. All in the service of growing stronger, and tasting sweeter loot.
The new at-will summonable vehicles make travel a breeze, not to mention the fun and easy jetpack gliding. It’s not exactly The Legend of Zelda where you can climb up any cliff, however, and there are plenty of annoying invisible walls to guide players along certain paths, or between specific regions.
While performance has been perfectly fine on the PlayStation 5 (which is apparently not the case on PC), we’ve run into a few bugs along the way. Notably with the radio towers refusing to complete, forcing us to completely exit the game and restart it. Rarely, enemies would get stuck in walls (always during quests that required us to kill everyone), forcing some creativity to hit them with explosive abilities in order to move on.
Local co-op players can’t exactly split up and cover their own territory, but we always stuck pretty close together anyway. Plus, many epic battles are easier with co-op. Not because you can revive each other (you can, but it’s tricky in the middle of a fight) but because you can quickly fast travel to each other, instantly returning to the mayhem. Player fast travel is also super handy if one player is moving ahead while the other stops to manage their hard-earned loot.
The Borderlands series didn’t necessarily need an open world (spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands incorporated a fun board-game like overworld), but we enjoyed exploring Kairos and getting constantly distracted by things to do, loot, and kill.
It’s Raining Guns
The looting and shooting has never been better in Borderlands 4. I’m pretty sure I said something similar in my review of Borderlands 3 — which is good!
The gunplay is fantastic. So many weapons have fun and creative under-barrel alt fire modes, from shotguns to tasers to flamethrowers and drone-launchers. Then at level 20, players begin to see weapon manufacturers mix and match within the same gun, opening up a whole new layer of enjoyable randomization.
Explosive Torgue ammo, plus Jakobs ricochets with alt-fire micro-rockets? Heck yes!
Using the right elemental types against different enemy defenses (health, shield, armor) becomes more meaningful on the harder difficulties. Thankfully, veteran players like us can immediately bump up to Hard for a better challenge with more rewards, even before completing the game and unlocking Ultimate Vault Hunter mode.
The fourth game also tweaks the loot tables, making legendaries a bit more rare and meaningful, though annoyingly hiding what their unique properties actually do. No, I don’t know what “Scarce,” or “Iced Out” means, and we shouldn’t have to open up a website to look it up!
As with the previous Borderlands games, co-op players see their own loot, and players can easily share by picking up and dropping them.
On the other hand, inventory management is an absolute pain, especially on split-screen. The menu systems are clearly designed for a mouse, and we constantly fought against the UI. Even just selecting pieces of gear to mark them as trash for easier selling proved buggy and annoying. For a game built around a fun loot system, inventory management is an egregious problem.
The new Vault Hunters are a fun bunch. Building on the triple-skill trees from Borderlands 3, each of the four new Vault Hunters also have three completely different action skills, with skill trees that provide dramatic augmentations.
Vex, the witchy new Siren, can either gain a powerful battle cat companion, summon multiple ghostly reapers, or grow wings and fire off magical blasts — and each of those can be modified even further!
Legendary class mods also alter skills; my spouse found one for Vex that transformed the reapers into Badass versions, prompting her to rebuild her character around it. Players are free to divide their points between skill trees and combine different passive buffs, though more powerful skills and augments require going deeper into a single tree.
It’s a satisfying leveling system, even if my boy Amon is a bit under-cooked compared to the other powerhouses.
The Rating
Like the rest of the irreverent series, Borderlands 4 is rated M for Mature (17+), with Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, and Strong Language.
Players attack with guns, fists, supernatural abilities, and explosions in an immersive first-person view. Enemies often explode in bloody piles of limbs and viscera. However, the over-the-top violence is always played for laughs, alongside the darkly humorous writing and colorful Borderlands art design. The story is of a plucky group of rebels fighting back against a tyrannical overlord — not exactly hard to understand.
Parental discretion is advised, though most younger teens can easily handle the stylized violence. See our full Game Picker entry for Borderlands 4 for details.
The Takeaway
Gearbox doesn’t disappoint when it comes to their flagship series. While the story has never quite cooked as well as Borderlands 2, Borderlands 4’s solid open-world design, expanded character abilities (and personable dialogue!), and excellent gunplay has quickly made it our go-to co-op game.
Let us know what you think of our Borderlands 4 review on social media, and sign up for our weekly newsletter!
