Borderlands 3 gave us guns with legs. Borderlands 4 just gave me a gun that walked out on me. My dad would be proud.

Stutterlands 4 Review: An Unholy Trio of Pricing, UE5 and Denuvo

I’ve been a Borderlands fan for years. The chaos, the humor, the endless loot grind... it’s always been about fun first, never too serious. But Borderlands 4? It feels like Gearbox got dazzled by Unreal Engine 5, slapped on a $70 price tag, and forgot the part where the game is supposed to actually run.. Randy Pitchford said fans should have “realistic expectations.” But if “realistic expectations” means paying $70 for a stutter ridden mess that crashes every few minutes and wrapped in Denuvo DRM that tanks performance even further, then no thanks. That’s not realism, that’s laziness dressed up as ambition. The stutters are constant, the crashes are brutal, and it feels like the game fights you harder than the bosses do. Every firefight turns into a slideshow, every new area feels like a gamble whether the game will hold together or not. For a series built on fast, frantic chaos, it’s painful when the biggest challenge is just keeping the game from breaking.

Unreal Engine 5 Looks Pretty, But Plays Ugly

On paper, Borderlands 4 looks gorgeous. Unreal Engine 5’s lighting, reflections, and seamless world transitions give it a scale and detail the franchise never had before. But the moment you actually play, the shine fades. Stutters, frame drops, and bizarre loading hiccups pop up constantly. Even top-tier GPUs like the RTX 4080 and 5080 are struggling to keep 60FPS in 4K with DLSS on, and if the cutting edge hardware can’t do it, what chance do the average players have? Gamers on Twitter couldn’t even crack 60fps at 1080p with an RTX 3070, a card that’s miles above the so called minimum requirements. That’s not just a hiccup, that’s proof the system requirements are complete nonsense. And Gearbox basically shrugged, warning that if you don’t meet their next-gen minimums, the game might be unplayable. Imagine being told that before you even buy it. It’s not honesty, it’s them admitting they knew it was broken, but also knew people would still pay anyway.

Pricing Feels Like a Joke We’re Not In On

And then there’s the price. $70 for the base game is steep already, but $100 for Deluxe and $130 for Super Deluxe? Come on. For a game this unstable, it feels like paying premium for early access to a beta test. Randy Pitchford’s comment about real fans supporting the price was honestly insulting. Fans aren’t ATMs. We want to support the game, not bankroll optimization patches. It’s insane how devs keep shipping games with game-breaking bugs like it’s normal. These aren’t tiny glitches/bugs, they’re constant crashes and stutters, and they want full price for this mess?

What’s Still Great

I won’t pretend Borderlands 4 is all bad. In fact, underneath the mess, it might be the best Borderlands since 2. The humor lands, the gunplay is as addictive as ever, and the new mechanics have real potential to take the series forward. The tragedy is that none of it matters when the game can’t stay stable long enough for you to enjoy it. Every stutter, every crash, every performance hiccup turns what could have been the return of peak Borderlands into an expensive tech demo. And that’s what stings the most, there’s a damn good game here, maybe even a great one, but it’s buried under technical failures and a price tag that feels like a cruel joke.

Final Thoughts

Borderlands 4 should’ve been a victory lap. The full power of Unreal Engine 5, a fanbase that stuck around through every spin-off and cash grab and this is what we get? A broken, stutter-filled mess hidden behind Denuvo and a $70 paywall. Gearbox didn’t just drop the ball, they spiked it into the dirt and told us to clap anyway. The cruel part? This is actually the best Borderlands since 2. The writing hits, the gunplay is fire, and the world begs to be explored. But none of that matters when you can’t play for more than ten minutes without a hitch, a crash, or your frames falling off a cliff. It’s like locking a gourmet meal behind a glass case and handing us a plastic fork. Randy Pitchford told us to have realistic expectations... Fine. Here’s mine: I expect a $70 game not to run like a beta test. I expect a studio with Gearbox’s legacy not to let DRM strangle its own players. I expect respect. Instead, we got excuses. Unless Gearbox pulls its head out of its own hype machine, Borderlands 4 could kill the franchise. First the garbage and total joke of a movie, now this broken mess, they’re turning a legacy into a joke.

Don't Buy until they Fix the Performance Issues

🎅Would Appreciate If You Follow My Curator Page🎅 Would mean a lot if you supported me there, would help me create more quality and honest reviews.

Terrible optimization. Another Unreal Engine 5 casualty. Not worth buying in its current state unless you have a NASA PC.

Incredibly good game. Someone please muzzle Randy Pitchford, and start optimizing the game ASAP please.

The refund button is broken, this fat guy just keeps yelling "No Refunds!" at me so I guess I have to enjoy the game.

Terrible, terrible performance. Worst I've ever seen. Turned it down to Low graphics presents and couldn't hit 60 FPS, even with FSR upscaling on my RX 6900 XT.

Fun, impactful Borderlands gameplay. This stays a negative review until Randy shuts up.

Love how modern day games cant be bothered to be optimized anymore, and they still want 70$

My nan runs better than this and she's crippled with arthritis

It runs like absolute garbage. Cannot recommend this game until they've fixed the performance issues. My system reaches a maximum of 50fps in combat on medium settings with DLSS turned on in performance mode. (I refuse to use ultra performance since it massively impacts visual clarity) Ryzen 9 3900X OC Nvidia RTX 3090 OC 32GB RAM 3200mhz Samsung 970 Evo M.2 1440p Edit: Stop telling me to upgrade components or update my drivers. I am not an idiot. On another note: I downloaded a UE5 tweaker mod for BL4 from nexusmods and now the game runs perfectly fine at a stable 90fps, no freezes or stutters! (Tested in the same areas where I had big issues before) The mod has no visual impact on the game and optimizes the engine itself, which to me proves that the devs did a lazy job. Hope this helps anyone that was struggling like me!

borderlands 4 fps

WARNING: If you want above 60fps 1440p and don't have at least a 3080, I would not buy the game! The performance and optimization is classic untouched unreal engine 5 so it runs really poorly. I have a 3080, i7-12700f, 32gb ram, and an ssd. Averaging 60-90 fps on medium settings (1440p) with DLSS on performance in the tutorial and first open world section. I don't like framegen, but with that on instead I get around 140-160. I haven't had any crashes so I may just be lucky - I did update drivers for BL4 so that may play a role if you run into it. Visual wise it looks good, but it does not have the same feel as the other borderlands games - it looks like an Unreal engine game (whereas in the past the BL games looked very distinct). Outside performance the game itself is good so far. New vault hunters are fun and the gunplay is great. Story seems a lot more "serious" with most of the real wack comedy in side-missions. All in all, if you can run it - it's fun. I got lucky so my experience is positive, but the devs did a not-so-great optimization job and if its runs bad on your computer I would just return it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those curious about my settings with a similar build: Nvidia Control Panel: Updated to most recent drivers Manage 3D settings -> Shader Cache Size: 10 GB Ingame Settings: Basic: windowed fullscreen 2560x1440 No frame limit vsync off FOV at 103 Advanced: Anti-Aliasing: enabled Upscaling method: DLSS Upscaling quality: Performance Scene capture quality: High Nvidia Reflex: Boost HLOD: Medium Geometry: Medium Texture Quality: Medium Texture Streaming Speed: High Anistropic Filtering: x8 Foliage density: Medium Volumetric Fog: medium Volumetric cloud: medium Shadow Quality: Medium Directional Shadow Quality: Medium Volumetric Cloud Shadows: Disabled Lighting Quality: Medium Reflections Quality: Medium Shading Quality: Medium Post Process Quality: Medium Motion Blur amount: 0.0 Motion Blur quality: Off

Unoptimised and horrible. Already refunded as it doesn't run beyond 20-30 fps.

Borderlands is a franchise where every new entry feels like a gamble: you either get a solid, fun experience or absolute horse sh*t. Borderlands 1 – The game where it all began. Nothing special story-wise but still fun to play due to how the game felt. Borderlands 2 – The game where we meet our favorite villain and get delivered a very solid story and fun adventure, with the same fun game mechanics as the previous entry. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel – The story of how Handsome Jack came to be. Mechanics were nice, story was good, but it all felt a lil… lackluster and boring. Good enough, but maybe better as a DLC. Tales from the Borderlands – A lot of fun, but then again I personally love Telltale-type games. It was goofy, wholesome, and story-rich. Borderlands 3 – A game that, when it comes to how it plays, was a total blast. But story-wise it was just one big dumpster fire… literally.... We all remember how we felt while watching the credits and hearing “This Girl is on Fire”? Because I sure as hell do. And it was NOT good. I was mad. It felt like story-wise they just decided to purposely be weird and write something bad. But they did come back around again with the DLCs. genuinely loved those. Then Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands came out and everyone acted like we were back again. I don’t understand why, because Wonderlands was even worse than Borderlands 3. The story sucked and was bland. The world looked dumb, and the overworld mechanic was absolute trash. But holy hell, I did not think after the ending of Borderlands 3 they could go even further beyond and make a worse ending — but oh no, trust me, they did. And then the DLCs were even worse (literally just waves of enemies and basically no story). New Tales from the Borderlands – A game that was so insanely bad that it felt like Gearbox and 2K were just spitting in our face at this point. As if they actively wanted to tell us “Fck you, we own you and you will eat whatever we sht out for you.” And it was exactly that moment where I decided my Borderlands days were over. No longer was I gonna spend time and money on their company. Yet… here we are again. Borderlands 4 – A game I bought because a girl that I adored was excited to play with me. It made me feel like, even if it was gonna be a bad story, I’d at least get to play it with her. And that’s all that mattered to me. But then the worst thing that could’ve happened happened. She passed away. And I was left behind with nothing but grief, sorrow, and the release date of Borderlands 4 coming painfully close. Time passed by as if it was nothing. And the day arrived. I decided to, even though it hurt, play on launch day and today I finally finished it. Here is my review: Borderlands 4 – A game that I was afraid to play because if I was going to hate it that would just make everything so much more painful. At first everything is quite slow and long. It feels like you are doing the same stuff again and again and there are just way too many enemies for how much story is going on. But then the story kicks in and plot happens and everything unravels. And it was beautiful. It has its bad moments and it has some bad mechanics here and there (example: no mini-map, navigation does not always work, you get stuck here and there, controls can feel a lil wonky now and then when you try to grapple things, and like I said earlier I think there are way too many enemies thrown at you at all times, and the bosses feel a little too easy yet as if they tried to then solve that by giving them way too much health). But I am happy to say that the story (even though the ending was a little bland and boring and we didn’t get a whole lot of returning characters from the previous games) was genuinely a lot of fun and well-written. I am glad she allowed me to experience this. and I am looking forward to the DLC'S. Thank you for reading.

Is Borderlands 4 worth it? Fun? Yes. Optimized? Absolutely not. Playable? Barely. RTX 5090 dips under 30 FPS in heavy fights. VRAM usage skyrockets, frame pacing is a mess, and DLSS feels mandatory just to stay above water. Good game buried under terrible performance. Feels like I’m beta testing instead of playing!

They've learned their lesson with Borderlands 3, fixed the issues and brought up a new game with new things to do, more freedom of movement, a massive map full of npcs to shoot at. Compared to previous borderlands this hold ups to be the best of them all (even BL2 that i have Hundreads of hours in) You can skip story on new characters after you complete the game you can shut up claptrap specifically you can spawn and edit your vehicle from anywhere you can fast travel with ease from anywhere you can replay bosses for targeted loot there is random events scattered around the map to make even the most simple travel interesting the Bl3 gunplay (best part of that game) is here and is enhanced. Fun skill trees, fun vault hunters The inventory UI is totally new with tons of filters and selections, and you can FINALLY loot as trash for easy selling (with one key press) You have a Glider and a HookShoot kinda thingy to travese the map. You have double jump and air dash for more movement on hetic combat... i could go on and on If you enjoy Borderlands 2, get it if you enjoy Borderlands 3 (with mods) get it now. Borderlands 4 is a true and fun sequel

Only real fans will buy this and find a way to make it happen.

Poor optimization once again. CEO is blaming the customer. Don't support game devs with their heads in the sand.

I have a 5090 and a newest ryzen 3dx with more than enough ram. The game crashes now that I am over the 2 hours played. Had no issues playing it until the latest patch/update. Trying to see if I can get a refund since most time was spent trying to get the game to run instead of actually playing. AAA title on UE5.... wonder if companies will learn.

Feels like BL2 again, and I’m loving it. Tons of quests and side quests and side-side quests, loot everywhere, and just plain fun. Played 4 hours co-op with a friend and had zero issues, even though I’ve heard others hit bugs. Will update as I go, but so far this is the Borderlands I’ve been waiting for.

---

2025-09-12 Update I originally posted this review simply because I'd been hearing folks complain about bugs and performance, and I wanted folks to know I hadn't hit any. Since the review has got much more attention than I anticpated, I thought I'd provide my scale for how I will ultimately rate Borderlands 4. Hopefully this helps somebody. Better than... Pre-Sequel: Game feels like more than a phoned in cash grab [ ] Tiny Tina's: I want to play through a second time [ ] Borderlands 3: I want to keep playing after reaching whatever Ultimate Vault Hunter mode in this game [ ] Borderlands 2: Not possible. This game is in my top 5 of all time. Played hundreds of hours on multiple generations of console, skipped work, pulled all nighters, went to sleep thinking about it, woke up wondering when I could get my next "hit." (Seriously.)

---

Trap God suggested I add my config. Great idea. Thank you. My system is fairly good but nowhere near best. I run at 1440@60fps. CPU and GPU were both working hard with the game's "benchmark" settings, which were mostly in the Very High and High category. Those are actually much higher than 2K/Gearbox's recommended settings for my 4070Ti at 1440p. I encountered no problems at all, though. My System Windows 11 i7-13700KF 64GB RAM SSD (no idea the quality) RTX 4070 Ti I don't like my fans so loud, so after playing, I reduced all the settings to the ones in the recommended chart. Played a few more hours. CPU and GPU ran much cooler. GPU fan quiet now. I'm sure the graphics and textures and such were lower quality. I can't tell. Gameplay same. I like it. I still like it. If you don't like it, changing the graphics settings won't make you like it.

I have not been plagued so far by performance issues and have enjoyed a lot of the changes they've made. Most importantly the writing has taken a step in the right direction. World events feel fun and interesting and the world is beautiful. Though things do feel strangely not borderlands here somehow. I'll update this when I play some more but if you're looking for more borderlands this is it and they've adapted well.

so far the story and gameplay are actually really fun, but it really is frustating when even me with a 4070ti super can barely get 60fps with upscaling. this is a cartoon game. fix optimization with a few updates and i think this could be really good but wow this may be some of the worst optimization ever.

I'm not sure what the fuss about with some folks pertaining to that they can't run the game. They prob have AMD toaster machines.. any who.... For me it runs perfect, 14900k, 96gb ddr5 ram, and 5090 aorus master on two OLED G9 95SC stacked. The story, graphics, the vault hunters, abilities, and guns are pretty sick so far. If you do bounties you unlock sweet guns and i have a few i can't use them right away until i get to a certain level. However, the ones i did obtain mixed with my vault hunter - Amon is UBER!!! SO MUCH DMG!!!! Playing on hard difficulty makes it look easy with Amon. I'm also liking the customization that you can do for your character, echo, weapons you name it. So far 10/10 until otherwise or I complete the game. I highly recommend anyone who can be able to run it, get it!!!!

Idk what everyones complaining about just get a good PC lol 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎

Pretty fun Gameplay, a lot to do but wouldnt recommend paying full price for this game until it goes on Sale.