Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4, released 11 September 2025, arrived carrying real expectations after Borderlands 3's more divided reception — and on the specific question of gunplay, Gearbox largely delivered exactly what longtime fans wanted. What makes this review necessary to write in full, rather than simply reporting an 81 Metascore, is the substantial, well-documented gap between that critical reception and where the game actually sits on Steam: Mixed across more than 56,000 reviews. That gap has a specific, traceable explanation involving both a genuine technical crisis and a genuinely remarkable public-relations failure, and untangling both honestly is what this review sets out to do.

Gunplay that earns the praise, even from unhappy players

What's striking about the review sample is how consistently the core mechanics draw real credit even from reviewers who land on an overall negative recommendation. "Purely in terms of gameplay, Gearbox has more or less perfected the Borderlands formula in Borderlands 4," one detailed review states, going on to explain the reviewer's actual complaints lie entirely elsewhere. Another, writing after fifty hours: "This game has the best gunplay in the franchise trapped inside" other problems the reviewer goes on to detail. A further reviewer who ultimately couldn't recommend the game due to performance concedes directly: "I won't lie, this is definitely better than BL3 [gameplay-wise]... I can't really enjoy the game with this horrendous performance." That specific, repeated pattern — genuine mechanical praise paired with an entirely separate, dominant complaint — is the clearest signal in this sample about where the real story lives.

A severe, well-documented performance crisis

The dominant complaint across the sample concerns PC performance, described with real specificity rather than vague dissatisfaction. "Gameplay is badly optimized for any hardware that's not brand new. 30-40 fps on an RTX 3080 with DLSS is a joke," one review states, describing genuinely high-end hardware struggling with the game's demands. Steam Deck performance draws its own pointed, specific criticism: "How this got the green check-mark of verification on the Steamdeck at 20 frames-per-second... I'll never know," one review states, a complaint echoed by several others who argue the platform's "Verified" badge doesn't reflect the frame rates they've actually experienced. Months after launch, the complaint persists rather than fading: "game runs worse after today's update, don't know how they managed to pull this one off," one review states, dated well into 2026.

A CEO's response that made things worse, verified directly

What separates this review from a standard "rough launch, needs patches" story is a real, extensively documented public-relations crisis this review can confirm directly rather than merely relay from player accounts. Independent press coverage — including detailed reporting from GamesRadar, PC Gamer, TheGamer and GameRant — confirms Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford spent days publicly responding to PC performance complaints not with acknowledgment, but with a series of statements that multiple outlets found remarkable enough to cover extensively and collectively nicknamed "the great Pitchford Twitter crashout of 2025." Verified, directly quoted statements include telling a frustrated player to "code your own engine and show us how it's done please," describing the situation using the phrase "premium games are made for premium gamers," claiming that "less than 1% of 1%" of players were filing what he considered legitimate performance tickets, and advising unhappy Steam purchasers to simply "get a refund." This review's own sample reflects that controversy directly, with multiple reviewers citing it as the specific reason their opinion of the game soured: "I wanted to be patient about this review... But then Randy spoke on Twitter. I can in no good conscience recommend this game," one review states, explicitly separating genuine gameplay appreciation from the studio-conduct issue that changed their final verdict.

This isn't a case of reviewer exaggeration needing correction — independent, professional press coverage confirms the specific quotes and the broader pattern of public dismissiveness in detail, making this a real, verifiable factor in the game's reception rather than an unfounded rumour. A related headline in the developer's own news feed, referencing "Gearbox's biggest DLC mistake" being addressed by a later character release, suggests even Gearbox itself has since acknowledged some of the missteps from this period, though this review found no direct public apology from Pitchford specifically addressing the performance-complaint controversy itself.

A real, separate monetisation complaint

Layered on top of the performance and PR crisis sits a distinct, also well-documented complaint about pricing and post-launch content. At a NZ$169.95 launch price — notably higher than most comparable AAA releases — reviewers describe real frustration at the recurring paid content model that followed: "they decided that selling singular missions as DLCs is a good post-launch model," one review states, while another describes the specific cadence directly: they "state that they plan to release $20 paid content every QUARTER on a full priced game." Checking the developer's own communications confirms this cadence is real and ongoing — Bounty Pack 3 and 4 and multiple Story Packs have shipped through mid-2026, a genuine, sustained content pipeline, though one that a meaningful share of the sample feels is inappropriately monetised given the base game's already premium price. A related, more specific complaint concerns edition fairness: "not sure why this publisher decided to punish those who bought standard edition... complete game editions are 30% off" while individual DLC and the standard edition saw no equivalent discount, one review states.

A structural complaint about a later update

A smaller but specific complaint concerns a later patch that introduced shared character progression across the game's four Vault Hunters. "You cannot release a new character and then in the same stroke make it so 70% of the game's content isn't replayable," one detailed review states, describing a change that, while addressing a real, previously-requested feature, had an unanticipated side effect of reducing incentive to replay earlier content with different characters for players who'd already progressed one character far.

Where this leaves a buyer

At NZ$169.95, discounted to roughly $85 at the time of writing, Borderlands 4 delivers gunplay the review sample consistently credits as the series' best, and Gearbox's sustained, ongoing content investment through mid-2026 is real. The honest, necessary context — verified directly against independent press coverage rather than simply relayed from player frustration — concerns a genuine, severe PC performance crisis and an extraordinarily public, well-documented failure by the studio's own CEO to respond to it with anything resembling accountability, a pattern serious enough that multiple major outlets covered it in specific, quoted detail over several days. Layered on top of that sits a real, separate complaint about post-launch monetisation on an already premium-priced release. Players with genuinely high-end, well-cooled hardware who can separate the studio's public conduct from the game itself are likely to find real, well-earned gunplay underneath all of this. Players who weigh a publisher's treatment of its own customers heavily in a purchase decision have real, well-documented reasons for the scepticism this review's sample expresses so consistently.