Borderlands 3
Gearbox Software · Shooter, RPG, Action
Overview
Borderlands 3 is a first-person looter shooter set seven years after the events of Borderlands 2. Players select one of four new Vault Hunters and travel across multiple planets to stop Troy and Tyreen Calypso, twin cult leaders seeking to harness the power of alien Vaults scattered throughout the galaxy. The game features procedurally generated weapons, cooperative multiplayer for up to four players, expanded skill trees with multiple action skills per character, and new traversal mechanics including sliding and mantling.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT7,656 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players come back to Borderlands 3 for how it plays. 32% of the longer reviews praise the gunplay or gameplay outright, singling out the shooting, movement, weapon variety and character builds, and some call it the best in the series. The story DLC campaigns are a second draw, and reviewers describe them as better written than the main game. Others mention co-op with friends, the Mayhem endgame and the look of the game.
The main story pulls the other way: 33% of the longer reviews call the writing, villains, jokes or plot bad, often in the same review that praises the shooting. Part of that complaint is about time rather than taste. Characters talk at length, the next objective waits until they finish, and players trade tips for muting voices or installing a dialogue-skip mod. A smaller group runs into crashes, corrupted saves and co-op connection failures, and reviews that bring up the price mostly advise buying it on sale.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Gunplay, movement and weapon varietyHigh
No other strength comes up as often, and plenty of negative reviews grant it too. Reviewers single out the slide and mantle, the feel of each manufacturer's guns, and the number of strange weapons ("guns with legs" comes up). One reviewer puts it as "Best gameplay in the series held back by the worst antagonists." Some players who quit over the story still say the shooting was the part they enjoyed. A few dissenters find the loop dated or say the fun wears off once the story drags.
The DLC campaignsMedium
8% of longer reviews praise the expansions, and several rank them above the base campaign. The ones named are Bounty of Blood, Guns, Love, and Tentacles, Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot and the Krieg campaign. "There is a lot of great DLC that is way better than the base game," one player writes. The later add-ons get fewer kind words, and some reviewers call the Arms Race mode and the second season pass (with its fourth skill tree) thin.
Endgame, builds and skill treesMedium
7% of longer reviews bring up the endgame (Mayhem levels, takedowns, Guardian Rank, True Vault Hunter Mode), mostly with approval, and players describe build variety across the four vault hunters and their skill trees as deep. One player who reviewed it negatively at launch writes that "Mayhem 11 made the endgame what it should've been at launch" and that later buffs to gear turned the game around for them. Critics say Mayhem mostly makes enemies tankier and that replaying the campaign to reach it is a chore.
Visuals, art style and musicMedium
5% of longer reviews compliment the graphics, environments or art style, and a smaller group praises the soundtrack. Players like the cel-shaded look across the different planets, and one notes the game "has amazing environment art and music, totally overlooked." A few find the screen too busy with effects in big fights.
Co-op with friendsMedium
4% of longer reviews say outright that the game is at its best with friends, and short positive reviews say the same in a line. "Game is a blast to play with a group of friends, playing alone is an entirely different experience," one reviewer writes. A few reviewers who dislike the story say playing with friends is what makes the game worth it.
Quality-of-life upgrades over the older gamesLow
A smaller group points to auto-pickup for ammo and money, fast travel from the map, the Lost Loot machine and sorting or selling by rarity as reasons the game feels smoother than Borderlands 2. Some say it is hard to go back to the older games because of these.
Where players are split
How it measures up to Borderlands 2High
22% of longer reviews compare the game with Borderlands 2. The usual line is that Borderlands 3 plays better and Borderlands 2 tells a better story, with Handsome Jack as the yardstick the new villains fail to meet. Some players go further and tell newcomers to skip to Borderlands 2; others push back that "the hate for this game comes more from the community's love for handsome Jack than any issues with the game itself." Reviews that mention Borderlands 4 add a second comparison, and some of them prefer this game's feel, calling it "more fluid than 4 in my opinion".
Worth it on sale, less so at full priceMedium
13% of longer reviews mention a sale, a discount or the low price they paid, usually with the advice to buy it cheap. Players who picked it up for a few dollars in a seasonal sale write about it happily, while others say the full price and the split DLC packaging feel steep. "If you see this game on sale for like $6 pick it up but at full price this is an absolute joke," one reviewer writes.
Legendary loot that drops constantlyLow
A smaller group complains that legendary weapons drop so often they stop feeling special. "The game showers you with legendaries to the point it's almost all you drop long before the level cap," one negative review says, adding that this narrows loot variety. Others like it: one player writes, "I don't view legendaries as rare trophies to hunt; I view them as keys to more gameplay opportunities."
Difficulty: too easy, then too spongyLow
Some reviewers find the first playthrough far too easy, with harder settings held back until the campaign is done ("it can get very easy during the first play through even for a non-skilled player"). Others complain about the opposite in the endgame and in some boss fights, where enemies soak up bullets and bosses spend long stretches immune, so the two groups are mostly describing different stages of the game.
PC performanceLow
Reports of good and bad performance turn up in about equal numbers. Some players report stutter, frame drops and DX12 trouble even on strong hardware ("WORST optimization i've ever seen for a pc game though"); others say it "runs very nice" and praise it on the Steam Deck and Linux.
What frustrates players
The main story, villains and humorHigh
33% of longer reviews call the writing, story, villains, plot or jokes bad, far more than raise any other complaint. The Calypso Twins, written as streamer villains, are named most, followed by Ava; reviewers also object to the deaths of returning characters and to humor they call cringey or dated. Reviewers also object that their own vault hunter is sidelined in cutscenes while side characters drive the plot. "The sad paradox of BL3 is that it features the best gameplay in the series, balanced out by the worst story to boot," one sums up. A minority defends it as overhated or simply fine for a Borderlands game ("I feel like I'm one of the few that actually enjoyed the characters and storyline").
Dialogue you cannot skipMedium
6% of longer reviews either complain about being made to wait through dialogue or give tips for avoiding it: set the dialogue volume to zero, play a podcast over it, or install a dialogue-skip mod. Muting only goes so far, because objectives wait for characters to finish: "I tried just shutting off the speech volume but you still have to wait until the npcs finish yapping." One player describes the mission rhythm as "talk talk, follow follow, talk more talk more, secure area, talk more, follow, over and over". Reviewers say it wears thinner on replays, since every new character goes through the same scenes.
Crashes, corrupted saves and other bugsMedium
A smaller but persistent group reports crashes to desktop, crashes at launch or in the main menu, and DX12 instability; one player says "I cannot play a single session without the game crashing now." Some also lose progress. Players describe saves corrupted after a crash or power cut, cloud saves overwriting local progress, and a "Your settings failed to save" prompt that keeps coming back. Some quests also break and need a reload to progress.
Ads and DLC upsells in a paid gameLow
Players object to full-screen ads at launch, DLC posters and quest markers in Sanctuary that point to content they do not own, and DLC-only gear in the loot pool. "The game now opens with a full screen ad to sell you the Pandora's Box collection," one reviewer writes. The second season pass, sold separately after the first, adds to the sense of being nickel-and-dimed.
Co-op connection and SHiFT problemsLow
Co-op is praised, but some groups never get it working. Reviewers report SHiFT network errors, disconnects mid-session, crossplay parties that will not form, and lag. "I spent over an hour troubleshooting with friends just trying to make multiplayer work only for it to not work," one writes. A few also note there is no split-screen on PC.
Repetitive missions and backtrackingLow
Some players find the campaign long and padded with fetch quests, escort-style missions that follow an NPC, and back-and-forth trips through the ship and Sanctuary. One review says the mission design "consists of following NPC's around and waiting to see if the scripting triggers correctly".
Menus, map and inventory on PCLow
A few players say the interface feels built for a controller: inventory clicks that do not register with a mouse, a map that is hard to read, and only one quest tracked at a time.
Install size and drivingLow
A handful of reviews complain about the size of the install, and some dislike the vehicle handling ("Worst driving mechanics I have ever experienced").
3. The player conversation
Positive and negative reviews often make the same two points, that the shooting is excellent and the story is grating, and differ mainly in which one they weigh more. Advice to mute the dialogue turns up on both sides. Long-time fans of the series hold the writing up against Borderlands 2, while a few players for whom this was a first Borderlands game say they paid the story little attention.
Because the slice is the most recently updated reviews, its volume swings say more about when people edited or wrote reviews than about the game. The game-focused reviews written from mid-June 2025 on were positive at about 80%, in line with Steam's lifetime English rating. Reviews written from September 2025 on start measuring the game against Borderlands 4, and some of those prefer this one, but the story-versus-gameplay debate holds steady: the story complaint appears in 32% of longer reviews written before mid-September 2025 and 33% of those written after.
4. What the developers could do
- Add a dialogue skip and let objectives advance while characters talk. Unskippable conversations and forced waiting are the most practical part of the story complaint, and players are already installing mods and muting voices to get around them.
- Let second and later characters skip the main campaign. Reviewers who want to try another vault hunter dread replaying the same story scenes to reach True Vault Hunter Mode and the endgame.
- Fix the crash and save-corruption bugs. Crashes at launch and in play, DX12 instability, saves lost after a crash or power cut, and the recurring settings-save prompt cost players real progress.
- Remove launch ads and DLC nags from the paid game. Full-screen ads, DLC posters and quest markers for unowned content, and DLC gear in the base loot pool read to players as an upsell inside something they already bought.
- Make co-op connections reliable. SHiFT errors, disconnects and failed crossplay parties stop some groups from playing together at all.
- Offer a rarer-loot option. A setting that lowers legendary drop rates would answer the players who say loot stopped feeling special without taking the loot shower from those who enjoy it.
- Rework the PC inventory and map for mouse and keyboard. Missed inventory clicks, a hard-to-read map and single-quest tracking are recurring small irritations.
