Is Borderlands 4 fun? Not really, not on PC right now. Borderlands 4 scores 3/10 for fun. The guns and movement are great, but stutter, crashes and long shader waits stop most new players first.
Where this score comes from: Steam player reviews, last checked against 333 recent and most-helpful English reviews in November 2026. Borderlands 4 on Steam
Borderlands 4 is Gearbox’s 2025 looter shooter, the first in the series with one big open world instead of separate zones. A year after launch, a free weekend and its deepest sale yet brought in a fresh wave of players.
Borderlands 4 scores 3/10 on immediate fun. Only about one in four players under 20 hours recommends it, and the reason is rarely the shooting. New players describe hours in settings menus, shader compiling on every launch and frame drops mid-fight on cards that should handle it easily. The ones who get it running smoothly mostly have a good time. Too many never do.
Moment to moment, plenty of fans call this the best-playing Borderlands yet. Even angry reviews stop to praise the gunplay. Gliding, dashing, a grapple and a hoverbike you can summon anywhere make getting around a joy, and there is no fall damage to slow you down. Guns are built from parts made by different manufacturers, so loot drops stay interesting and players swap weapons far more than in older games.
Fans who stick with it say the loot chase still works, some for well over 100 hours.
Performance, by a wide margin. One player spent about four of their first ten hours watching the shader bar, and others report a 10 to 13 minute compile before the menu, repeated after a crash or a settings change. Owners of new high-end cards describe sub-60 frame rates and stutter in combat. Some crash so often they cannot leave the first area. The install has grown to around 190 GB.
Behind that, the open world. Players call it empty, with side quests that feel the same and pay out little, and the writing lands flat for most. One base-game owner got a legendary drop that needs a DLC to equip.
Solo: Fine if your PC behaves. Players who go it alone like how freely the open world lets them roam, though some say it goes stale later.
With friends: This is where reviewers say the series comes alive, and co-op couples are some of its happiest players. The catch is that everyone needs a PC that can run it. One player’s friend refunded for exactly that reason, and owning different DLC packs can stop a group from playing the same content.
Not for most PC players today. If your rig is strong, you can live with a long wait at launch, and you have a co-op partner, the shooting is good enough to carry a deep-sale purchase. Everyone else should wait for real performance fixes. If you want a looter shooter to compare, Destiny 2 lands at 4/10 for different reasons.
For comparison, we rated Battlefield 2042 4/10 and Starfield 4/10 on the same fun-only scale.
See where it lands in our list of games not worth playing.
Borderlands 4 scores 3/10 on immediate fun. Great guns and slick movement. Shame the PC port stutters, crashes and still stalls on shaders.
Stutter, crashes. Empty open world.
One question: did it deliver immediate fun? Graphics, story depth, difficulty and critical acclaim are ignored. Pick-up-and-play accessibility is rewarded; anything that makes you wait for the fun to start is penalized.
How we score: We don't care about graphics, story depth, or critical acclaim. One question — did it deliver immediate fun? We reward pick-up-and-play accessibility and penalize anything that makes you wait for the fun to start.