Welcome back to Save State where we hunt in your vaults till you Borderlands. The Borderlands titles are a special bunch in that they really popularized the genre of rooty-tooty shooty looty games. The first Borderlands used bright colors and a faux-cel shaded art style to differentiate itself from the dusty brown shooters that made up its contemporaries, a move that paid dividends as it made the game stand out well from among the crowd. Add onto the fact that there were “bazillions” of guns due to weapons in the game having a variety of parts, extensive skill trees, and an addictive gameplay loop of finding new loot, and you have yourself a pretty special experience for both fans of RPGs and first-person shooters.
The original Borderlands had some humor in it, but it honestly wasn’t until the Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC story that Borderlands really got to exhibit the humor that would come to define the series. Knoxx’s exasperation with the Vault Hunters combined with a character who could only radio you through the guise of a male enhancement ad made for a great time that’s funny even to this day. Borderlands 2 would take everything that worked from the first one and ramped it up to 11 using quite possibly one of the greatest villains in gaming history: Handsome Jack.
Borderlands 2 had more of everything. More guns, more skills, more Vault Hunters, and a way better story with much funnier dialogue in both main and side quests. The DLC stories for 2 were also quite good with Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage being endlessly quotable while Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep has many of the quirkiest and sweetest moments in the entire series. The Borderlands game after 2 was going to be a tough one to beat considering how much 2 had to offer, and Borderlands 3 would improve basically all gameplay systems of the series while fumbling pretty hard regarding the main story.
Borderlands 3 attempted to capture some of the magic of Handsome Jack with the Calypso Twins, but a good portion of the humor failed with these two villains. Borderlands 3 has a downright fascination with toilet humor for significant parts of the adventure, and while Borderlands 2 didn’t exactly shy away from it, cutting out a good portion of those jokes and just playing up the murderous streamer cult leaders of the Twins would have likely served it far better.
On top of the issues with the humor in Borderlands 3, there was also the issue that it forced you to wait nigh constantly while characters would speak for minutes on end before you could go do the fun things: shooting and looting. The story of 3 was nothing to write home about at all, and some moments were more cringe inducing than they were funny or even sad. But the late game challenges of Borderlands 3 with the takedowns, raids, DLC, and mayhem levels blew Borderlands 2 out of the water in my humble opinion. The gunplay in Borderlands 3 is ridiculously good, coupled with each Vault Hunter eventually having four whole skill trees and multiple viable builds to use each. Borderlands 3 didn’t have a good story in its main quest (the DLCs turned this around considerably in my opinion too with Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck being a real highlight), but everything else was top tier.
This brings us to Borderlands 4, of which I’m not the one who will be writing the review for it, so I can take my time and enjoy myself. There’s no need for me to do things like take notes on how brilliant the sound design of the game is, and that you can hear sounds mute and wind rushing in your speakers when you jump off of a really high place or anything like that. Instead, I can talk about how absolutely adorkable Harlowe is, and how I learned to stop worrying about humor level and just love the bomb.
The four Vault Hunters of Borderlands 4 are Amon, Rafa, Vex, and Harlowe, each of which appeal to different types of players and have some gameplay connections to previous Vault Hunters. Did you enjoy punching enemies to a red paste like Brick, Krieg, or Athena? Then you’ll love playing as Amon, who can certainly axe your enemies a question. Rafa, on the other hand, plays more like Zane, Zer0, and Axton from previous games, as his exo-soldier abilities let him zip around the battlefield and laser your opponents to death.
Vex is the siren of Borderlands 3, and she has the ability to summon phantoms of herself that can wield scythes or guns, a pet called Trouble, or she can stack bleed on enemies to one shot nearly anything in the game with some impressively broken synergies, making her more like Fl4k and Lilith. Harlowe the Gravitar functions a lot more like past sirens, with one of her action skills being a large radiation nuke, another shielding and buffing allies, while her last action skill is literally Maya’s from Borderlands 2. Each Vault Hunter also has their own innate trait that’s active no matter which of their three skill trees you invest points into, with a lot of their skills providing powerful synergies when combined with their traits and action skill.
Borderlands 4 has the Vault Hunters speak a lot more than any title previous, which helps showcase the personalities of the character you’re playing as way more than before. Harlowe is generally a well-meaning scientist who loves to belt out puns, while Vex is much more sarcastic and is absolutely tired with everybody’s nonsense. You can get a real distinct feel of the personality of these characters since they’ll reply naturally to each NPC or quest giver multiple times throughout the course of a quest. Harlowe’s lovable dorkiness actively caused my friend to try and be the one who initiated most story or side quest dialogue because he found Vex’s millennial mannerisms much more his speed.
The actual guns of Borderlands 4 are also pretty powerful. Guns can still have a wide variety of parts, but as you level up, you’ll start finding more guns that have licensed parts from other manufacturers, like a fast-firing SMG that can switch between two elements like another manufacturer’s SMGs normally can, or assault rifles that shoot explosive rounds that can ricochet into additional enemies if you score a critical hit. This licensed part system is definitely the next evolution of weaponry for Borderlands titles and offers a lot of flexibility and a ton of need to farm new gear in the game too. It may take a little while to get the perfect gun now because the pool for specific guns is so much larger than it used to be.
Thankfully, farming has been made much easier now too. After you clear a boss or unique encounter, a sign board with Mad Moxxi’s face will appear that allows you to spend some of your considerable cash reserves to re-attempt the boss fight. Gone are the days of killing a boss and exiting to main menu, thankfully! Drop rates for more valuable weapons have also been adjusted, seemingly across the board due to this change as well, but you can still find loads of valuable weaponry while you play through the adventure.
This isn’t even accounting for the fact that Borderlands 4 is Gearbox’s attempt at an open-world style Borderlands game. There are side quests, many different types of collectibles, fast travel stations, and so many things to explore, see, and do. Weirdly, map progress doesn’t really seem to carry over from player to player, so if you primarily host sessions of Borderlands 4 with a friend, that friend may be astonished to see that their map is largely uncleared despite having played through over half the game with you.
It’s really strange, and something I hope gets addressed in a patch, but thankfully quest rewards and the benefits of finding collectibles, like ammo reserve and backpack expansions, still apply to your character even if you found them in another player’s game.
Overall, I have had a lot of fun with Borderlands 4 and look forward to continuing to play it using other characters with my friends. I haven’t quite hit max level yet, either, so there’s a lot of farming left for me to do as well because I’ve just been making do with any guns and gear I can find since Harlowe comes equipped with a radiation element Spirit Bomb that makes all of her problems go away. I can’t quite comment on what is available for post-game yet either, since I just unlocked Ultimate Vault Hunter mode and still need to see what all goes on with that.
That being said, I hope you enjoyed this entry of Save State, and my brisk jaunt through Borderlands games past. I’ll see you again in two weeks with likely an indie or old gem of a title I unearth from the piles of discs and cartridges that rest on my shelves. See you next time!