Borderlands 4

Performance comes up in 2,281 of the 5,835 negative reviews, more than any other topic. It also lasted: it appears in 48% of reviews dated September 2025 and still in 28 to 32% of those dated in each quarter of 2026. Players on high-end hardware (RTX 4070 Ti through 5090 class) reported 45 to 70 fps at high settings without frame generation, cutscenes dropping far below gameplay frame rates, blurry upscaling that could not be turned off cleanly, and a cel-shaded look they felt did not justify the cost. Launch-week comments from studio leadership framing it as a "premium" game for "premium" hardware are quoted back in 70 reviews. Reviews after the March 2026 performance patch describe real gains for some players, and several recommended the game only after it, but others reported the game running worse with each update, and a smaller group on strong PCs had no issues at all. Among negative reviews from players under two hours, 56% mention performance, shaders or crashes.

Shaders get their own complaints in 8% of reviews and 11% of negative ones: compiling at the launcher, again at the main menu, and again on entering the world, sometimes for 15 to 20 minutes and again after every patch or driver change. A few reviewers call the game "Shaderlands." Launch failures sit alongside it: black screens after compilation, update loops ending in fatal errors, and, after the September 2026 update, reports of the game refusing to start on some systems tied to its anti-tamper layer and Windows virtualization settings.

9% of reviews mention crashes or freezes and 8% mention bugs or resets. The worst cases are characters deleted or saves corrupted after crashes, SDU upgrades and skill points resetting (especially for non-host co-op players), quest steps that softlock and need restarts, falling through terrain, loot dropping out of the world, and a legendary vending machine quest that cheats you out of the reward if you sell junk first. Players with 50 hours or more raise bugs more often (12% of their negative reviews) than players who quit early (4%), likely because many of these bugs only surface over a long playthrough.

15% of reviews mention DLC or editions and 15% mention price. The complaints are concrete: $70 for the base game, $30 for a short story pack (Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned), editions that did not include the story DLC, no way to upgrade an edition for the difference, DLC that rarely went on sale, legendary drops tied to paid packs, and DLC advertising inside the game. Advice to "wait for a sale" or buy it on sale appears in 500 reviews, 246 of them positive. This is a veteran complaint: 30% of negative reviews from players with 50 hours or more mention DLC, against 7% of negative reviews written under two hours. Opinions on the DLC content itself were mixed, with some liking the Mad Ellie story and C4SH and others calling the pack too short for the price.

Veterans miss True Vault Hunter Mode and a proper New Game Plus, and describe the post-campaign loop as re-running the same bosses and wildcard missions for marginal upgrades, with timed events, immune phases, and crafting-style currencies (vile crystals, ordonite) standing in for content. Having to recollect every map collectible on each new character was a specific irritant. Several reviews say the months between launch and the first real content drop, and a Halloween event that felt thin, killed their momentum.

A few dozen reviews describe the same co-op problem: the host plays smoothly while everyone else rubberbands, desyncs, or loses skill and SDU progress. Some players who bought it for co-op said they could only recommend it solo. Joining friends and SHiFT account linking were smaller, related friction points.

Some reviews call the menus clunky or confusing: too many nested screens, weak map readability, no minimap, and a lot of time spent in inventory management. Tagging and selling improvements (see praise) softened this for some.

Some reviews say the same few enemy types repeat across every region, which makes the large world feel even more repetitive.

45 reviews bring up the game's Steam Deck Verified status, 12 of them dated February 2026, while players measured 15 to 30 fps in combat and lost graphics options on the Deck. Their anger is mostly at feeling misled by the badge.

A small but intense group objected when the March 2026 update made character progression shared across characters, overwriting what some had built; the later option to turn it off calmed most of this down.

42% of the reviews say the pack costs too much for what it holds. The most upvoted of them says "under no circumstances should this be $12" and that it should have cost $3, like the Headhunter packs. Players who name a fair price land between $3 and $10: "it really still feels something closer to $8-9 really," one writes, and another says "The DLC would have seemed fine to me if it were $6 instead of $12." 6% of the reviews (15) say to wait for a sale, some of them for 80% or 90% off, and 3% (8) say it should have been a free update.

Length is part of the same complaint. 33% of the reviews call the pack short, most of them alongside a price complaint, and many describe one mission with a few optional bosses: "its litterally 1 quest with reused mobs that have a different color crystal growing out of them," reads one of the most upvoted reviews. Most reported times run from "it took about 15 min to finish" to two or three hours for a player who beat every optional boss, and one reviewer says "The quest itself is shorter than many sidequests from the base game." Owners who got the pack in a bigger purchase object too: 9% of the reviews (22) mention a deluxe edition or bundle, and 12 of those still complain about the price, like the player who wrote "I got this free with the super kitchen sink edition and I feel ripped (pardon the pun) off."

"Gearbox saw the worst enemy type in Bl4 and decided to make a whole DLC around it," one review says. 23% of the reviews complain about the ordonite enemies, which fill the pack and its bosses and which players describe as the base game's Vile enemies with yellow crystals. What they object to is "the crystals that make them immune to all forms of damage until you knock them off," and two reviews note that "the large yellow crystal can only take damage once a second-ish." Players say this shuts out whole builds. One writes "Which makes all DoT damage useless," another says splash damage is close to mandatory, and a third argues "there shouldn't BE a common enemy category that just negates a build." On the final boss, one review adds, minion builds for Vex fall apart because her minions don't shoot the crystals.

Once the crystals are gone, 7% of the reviews (18) find the enemies and bosses bullet sponges. One sums the pack up as "Health bar simulator," and a player on Ultimate Vault Hunter mode 7 says "it feels like I'm shooting at a brick with arms and legs 90% of the time." Several also mention fire pillars and elemental puddles filling tight tunnels. A small group disagrees: three reviews like the new enemy type ("The new rock guys are much better than the original ones though"), and one player says "on UVH5 nothing felt like a sponge to me." Two negative reviews found the pack too easy.

"There are 4 optional bosses and the main boss, and every single one is the same fight," one review says, and another counts "3 bosses which are just beefed up normal enemies with a single extra attack." Most of the 14% of reviews (35) that dislike the bosses make that point: they are larger versions of regular enemies with the same crystal gimmick. Reviews of the final boss call it "a boring final boss that is literally just a large base game enemy" and describe constant area slams and waves of tanky adds, and one player notes that "it has an immunity phase towards the end where enemies will run up to it and heal it." Some players also complain that the bosses drop little loot for how long they take.

The fights have fans too. 12 reviews (5%) enjoyed them, 9 of them positive reviews. "Its a lot of optional bosses with fun mechanics," one says, and even a harsh review allows that "the final boss is sort of cool." Another negative review found the optional bosses harder than the final one, which "made the final boss a let down."

The pack brings back the pearlescent rarity, and 14% of the reviews (34) are unhappy with its loot, mostly the pearls. Players expected a rare chase item and found three pearls that drop easily: "Pearls use to be rare and special. They are neither of that now," and "And they're not even that rare, which was the whole point of pearls." Others say they are no stronger than legendaries ("the new Pearlescent loot is at the same power level of gold/orange"), and one long review takes apart the Handcannon pistol, saying it doesn't hit as hard as its name promises.

Not everyone found the pearls easy to get. In the first days after launch, one player wrote "Good luck with getting a pearlescent with these drop chances, unless you have 5 days to kill," and another switched to a positive vote after a pearl drop-rate update in early March. A few players report runs with no pearlescent and almost no legendaries, and one notes "They added 1 singular shield and grenade and zero class mods or launchers." The new vault card cosmetics get little attention: one calls them "uninspired and ugly," while another says "I also like the skins you can obtain." A handful of players like the pearls, such as the reviewer who wrote "I like the new pearlescent feature."

The single most upvoted review is about access: "I purchased the super deluxe version of the game and I don't have access to this DLC." It is one of the 5% of reviews (11) that report access problems or bugs. Another launch-day review says "Deluxe Edition owner, game says I don't have this dlc." A Super Deluxe owner the same day had access and concluded "so they seemingly fixed any issues others are having." Later reports describe the missions not appearing on the map until a later update, the pack's access point vanishing after a later DLC arrived, a failed download, and the DLC disappearing from a library overnight. In co-op, players mention lag, frozen cooldowns, revives that didn't work, and skills resetting when joining someone else's game.

The repeatable event is the main target of the 4% of reviews (10) that dislike the chores built into the pack: "Shoot a handful of enemies (way less than they throw at you in even drill sites), put containers they drop into extractor, boss spawns. Rinse/repeat." One player calls its four-minute timer unrealistic against tanky enemies and rare canisters, and another says the spawns have long gaps despite the timer. Inside the mission, players complain about carrying batteries to open doors and to reach fights, which one calls a mechanic used long after it stopped being fun.

Some complaints are really about the base game: 3% of the reviews (8) describe long shader compiles, poor performance and instability. "Compiling shaders took almost as long as the story mission??" one writes, and another says "Bad performance and doesnt fix any of the base games flaws."

Reviews that raise the price mostly say the pack is not worth it. They quote $30, €30, £26.99, AUD 50 and CAD 40, and some point out that this is about half the price of the base game. Many like the content and object only to the price: "Good, but not $30 dollars good." One of the most upvoted reviews puts it plainly: "This is a small story pack, not an expansion, and it should be priced accordingly." Most of the fair prices players suggest fall between $10 and $20, and a few split the $30 into roughly $15 for the story and $10 to $15 for C4SH. Players compare it with Borderlands 2 story DLC that sold for $10 to $15, and with Phantom Liberty, Blood and Wine and Starfield's Shattered Space. 15% of reviews bring up sales or discounts, mostly to advise waiting for one.

The few who defend the price make specific arguments. One reviewer works out that $15 in 2012 is about $33 today, others point out that the price included a new Vault Hunter, and one compares it with a trip to the cinema.

Reviewers who give a time mostly put the main story at between an hour and a half and four hours, and 73% of the reviews that call the pack short also raise the price. Some say it feels like a bounty pack with a new character attached, and many measure it against earlier Borderlands DLC. One wrote that "i felt it should have been the half way point, not the completion point." Both sides cite Steam's achievement stats, which reviewers say showed under 4% of players finishing the story. Critics read that as a bad sign, and one defender uses the same numbers to argue that few of the people complaining had played everything.

The pushback on length comes from 30 reviews, all of them positive. They report about five hours for the main story on a fresh character and 10 to 20 hours with side content, and some say the shortest times come from maxed-out characters rushing through ("Took my wife and I about 6 hours or so to complete, which seemed long enough to me.").

8% of reviews report bugs in the pack, and 13 say a bug kept them from finishing a mission, a quest or the story. The same problems recur: enemies spawning inside walls or floors so that "clear the area" objectives never complete ("enemies being stuck in walls which would force me to go to the main menu and come back"), bosses that never spawn or stay stuck in the ceiling, quest items lodged in walls, scans and objectives that never trigger, an NPC who vanishes, grapple points that don't work, and dialogue that skips itself. Players name the quests "It Grows in the Deep", "Doc Reluctantly" and "What Lies Dreaming". One review calls the pack "a near-endless stream of bugs, ranging from annoying to softlocking." Reviews written in September still describe softlocks.

One review says "EVERYTHING that is repeatable/farmable/doable in this dlc is a copy-paste of base game content." Others list what they mean: enemies adapted from rippers, threshers and creeps, returning drill sites and bunkers, Nightmare Rifts that work like the base game's world bosses in a new arena, and a Dahl mech boss fought twice. The burrowing threshers that hide underground for long stretches get singled out. A few defend the enemies, saying not all of them are reskins and that the mutating Damned Legion is a highlight.

Players with endgame builds say bosses die in seconds even on the hardest difficulty, and one calls the fights "tank and spank." Others single out the final boss and the abrupt ending. "the last boss is arguebly the weakest boss of the entire game," wrote one, and another said "Ending was so anticlimactic it pretty much ruined the whole DLC." A smaller group enjoyed the boss fights or the ending, and one praised the final boss's design: "the character artists have COOKED with that boss design."

Bundling C4SH with the story is a complaint in 6% of reviews, which see it as a way to justify the price ("Unfortunately they tied C4SH to the dlc so they could justify the price.") and want him sold on his own, the way Borderlands 2 sold its DLC characters. Reviewers report that an update on September 10, the day Story Pack 2 released, split the pack and C4SH into separate products. Five owners of the original bundle say they lost access to C4SH: "They separated the story content and the vault hunter, but didn't grant me the C4SH dlc so I cannot load my save and need to re-buy C4SH separately."

A few reviewers say the update that came with the pack brought crashes they never had before ("I played the main game for months and never had a crash. Ever since the Mad Ellie DLC, the game will randomly crash."), along with returning stutter, fresh shader compiles, lag for players who aren't hosting co-op, and frame rate drops in C4SH's third-person skill. Others describe Borderlands 4's long-running PC performance, such as needing frame generation or getting 15 FPS on a high-end card. In all, 6% of reviews complain about crashes or performance, and a smaller group says the game runs fine or better than before.

Reviewers who struggled to get around describe too few fast-travel points, unlabeled portal doors to the Speakeasy hub that they had to memorize, long detours around walls, platforms and blood water that kill without warning, and an ECHO-4 guide that points the wrong way. One summed up the pack as "three hours of walking back and forth over poorly designed glacier," and another wrote: "They need more fast travel points and/or shortcuts." One defender recommends using the Speakeasy exits to cut travel time.

Once the story is done, players who farm for builds find little to come back for. They want a raid boss ("where are the raid bosses") or a new endgame activity, and say the bosses are too easy for endgame builds. A few note that a raid boss and a takedown were announced as later free updates.

The update that came with the pack also changed Borderlands 4 itself, and a few players were hit by it. The level cap went up to 60. Cross-character progression marks the map as explored for new characters and starts them at level 4. Some players had their inventory upgrades reset: "I just lost all of my storage deck upgrades when I started this DLC." A few welcomed the level cap rise and the shared progression.

Nightmare Rifts are a new world event that pulls players into a horror arena with bosses and their own loot pool. Players like the idea but say the rifts spawn too rarely, and some of the new legendaries drop only there: "The new rift boss area is cool but the spawn rate of it is too low." One April review notes a patch that made them appear more often.

Unskippable dialogue wears on a few players: "Listen to people talk, kill 3 enemies. Repeat for way too long." Some turned the dialogue volume down to zero.

Of the 10 reviews that give a playing time, 8 put the single side mission at an hour or less, from "like 10 minutes" to "max an hour." In all, 25 reviews call it short, 9 of them recommenders. "This dlc is less than an hour worth of content," one negative review says, and a player who wishes they could return it wrote "i didnt even put an hour into the dlc...and its fully complete." A third looks back to older series DLC: "DLCs like Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep were 5/6+ hours to beat the main quest." One player suspects the tough enemies are there "to pad out the runtime of what is otherwise an extremely short experience, even for being a bounty pack."

Recommenders who call it short mostly treat the length as a drawback they can live with. "Pretty good. Wish it was longer tho." is the whole of one review, and another warns it is "still pretty short so keep that in mind but I had a good time in this one." Three other recommenders found it longer or long enough: one says it "took around 2 hours going through it the first time finding everything," another estimates "3 hours or so (maybe more?)," and a third calls the length decent.

The fights draw 11 complaints, all from negative reviews, and 7 of them say the pack reuses the base game's Order enemies. One review reads, in full, "one new enemy." Another asks "Why would Zane have ORDER synth in is memory realm," and a third wrote "Atleast previous DLC story had proper new enemies instead of more synths." One of them concedes "If you like base game combat you will like this."

Two reviews blame the new glitched enemies by name. One describes them as "both being bullet sponges AND teleporting around constantly," so that a shielded swarm turns into an annoying hide and seek, and adds "Enjoy stopping to fight them for 12 minutes every five steps you take." The other wrote "The new glitch effect enemies sound cool on paper, but execution made regular encounters more difficult/tedious that some boss fights." Two more call the encounters bullet-spongy or unbalanced without naming the glitched enemies. One player had the opposite problem, with neither the final boss nor most enemies putting up a fight. Two recommenders enjoyed the combat, one of them mentioning "some intense firefights."

"It's all platforming and empty spaces with a few small battle areas," one negative review says of the level between fights. Four other negative reviews also find it bare, calling it "a lifeless, linear area with nothing to do" or "frustratingly linear." One player found many rooftops blocked by invisible walls, more often than in the base game, and bypassed a new climbing mechanic the dialogue never mentions by doing parkour. Two recommenders disagree: "Platforming around the map is a blast," says one, and the other praises the "fun level design."

Four negative reviews, all written in the first ten days after launch, report bugs in the pack itself. Coins picked up after the case is solved leave the Pay to Win chest locked, one explains, so the achievement means replaying the whole mission. Another found "2 bugged achievements in under 1 hours," and the others hit missing guide lines on two tasks and an arcade entrance that never appeared: "the load zone for the arcade isnt spawning." Two more negative reviews are about Borderlands 4's performance in general, one describing around 10 minutes of shader compiling every time the game starts. One recommender found the framerate smooth in the DLC.

The coin hunt and its chests bother four negative reviews. One lists what is missing: "No way of tracking the collectables outside of dialogue. No map icons, no progress count in map or at the arcade." Another says "The Zane-coin chests don't provide loot that makes it feel worth while" and that "the mini-DLC does not give you a reason to come back to the map other than to run through it once and never again." Two recommenders do see a reason to return, pointing to the new weapons and a boss worth farming.

Of the 52 reviews, 21 weigh what the pack offers against what it costs. Thirteen say it falls short: "41 minutes of gameplay for 5 bucks plus taxes :0 these should be free," and "feels the most like a side quest they cut from the base game just to charge $6 for. Wait for a sale." Three call it worth it only barely or on discount ("Ok but worth 5,99€ at max"), and five say it is worth the money. Five reviews argue packs like this should be free or part of the base game, including two that still recommend it, and four point buyers to a sale or discount. One critic adds the Vault Card to the bill: "For the 12 dollars this pack costs (yes 12 including the vault card)."

Five reviewers say they got the pack through Borderlands 4's Ultimate, Deluxe or super deluxe edition, and they judge the deal differently. One Ultimate owner writes "ive never felt so robbed purchasing the ultimate edition of a game," a Deluxe owner advises against every bounty pack purchase, and another Ultimate owner says players without that edition can skip this one. A third Ultimate owner calls the extra cost "worth the money," and a super deluxe owner who enjoyed the pack still thinks it should be free content.

Estimates of the pack's length run from "its legit one story mission, 15minutes of content if you skip all the trash" and "20 minutes of content for 6 bucks, no side quests or collectables" to "1 Side quest that's 30 minutes long" and, at the top end, "1 to 1.5 hours worth of content." Of the 30 negative reviews, 12 call the pack too short or describe it as a single side quest, and three recommendations agree it is short.

Four recommendations push back. One says "if you rush you can probably finish it in 20 min, but do a little of exploring and it can be stretched to 1 or 2 hours"; another answers the length complaints with "2 hours is fine!" A third advises going in "expecting a polished high effort side quest" instead of side quests and collectibles.

Repetition is the complaint in nine of the 30 negative reviews, which say the pack adds little to what the base game already offers: "The same ripper mobbing? Check!", "half an hour of the same old gameplay and enemies," and "Doesn't have much to add to the game." Three of them measure it against older Borderlands DLC; one says "Borderlands 4 Bounty Packs make the Wonderlands DLC's look like Borderlands 2 Headhunter Packs" and suggests what a pack could add, such as "mini take downs, a boss rush, a small roguelike style arena with waves." Two recommendations disagree: one found the enemies that are not Order troops "a nice change of pace," and another says rippers "are always fun to shoot."

Four reviews report bugs in the pack: "invisible walls blocking my path or non-tangible platforms that I fell through," a mountain at the back of the map with no collision that drops you through the terrain, and a Harlowe player who could not damage the bosses and called it "just more bugged game for 6 bucks." One negative review also describes crashes when the game unloads parts of the map, a problem with Borderlands 4 itself.

Missing collision is the bug reviewers describe most: eight reviews tell of falling through floors or the world, one during the mission to save FL4K's pets, where "the floor isnt made correctly so you just fall in the void". In all, 21 reviews report bugs, 12 negative and 9 positive. Ten describe bugs that stall or block progress. Enemies get stuck where they can't be shot ("random enemy gets stuck in water no where near the combat area, can't shoot him at all to progress"), kills don't register for the quest, escort NPCs break ("A main mission NPC guide routinely glides over open air gaps, vibrates against walls, and teleports through walls."), and one player "Got softlocked twice in 10 minutes". A few reviews also mention dialogue with no audio, and one says "the DLC introduced such horrible multiplayer issues". Bug reports arrived in every week through the end of September. Some fans recommend the pack anyway, like the reviewer who summed it up as "buggy but fun , big step up from previous story pack", and seven reviews report no bugs, no crashes or better performance than the base game, including "I personally did not run into any bugs during my playthrough".

Fifteen reviews say the pack isn't worth what it costs, nine negative and six positive. A player who had bought the $120 version of the game wrote "they want $20 for this that is so insane". A recommending review put it more gently: "i dont feel like youre specifically getting your money's worth with how quick all the content can be completed". Some who enjoyed it say outright to wait, such as "TLDR I recommend waiting for a sale" and "Dont buy this DLC outright, wait for sales". Five reviews say it is worth the money, among them "Worth the price of entry, especially on sale." and "Only Dlc that i think is worth the money." One reviewer argued that most players will get the pack through the Super Deluxe Edition anyway.

Ten reviews report performance or stability trouble, eight of them negative. Three describe long shader compilation, from "it took longer than 30 minutes to do shaders" to a player on a high-end PC who sat through repeated compiles and crashes and concluded "No reason for this game to be so unoptimized." Three describe stutter ("the amount of stuttering is going to give me a stroke"), and three describe crashes or a game that would not start after the patch: "update broke game, it wont even run now." Some players blame the update that shipped alongside the pack: "The game is more unstable again after the addition of this DLC." One long review also reports vault cards and specializations resetting. Others had no such trouble: "this was the first DLC I had that didn't have a single crash in my 8 hour play session", and another reviewer dismissed the shader complaints because waiting for shaders is "a feature in every game in todays market".

Players describe strings of clear-the-area and fetch objectives: "it gets repetitive fast", and "the missions were just the same thing repeated 6 times if you do the optional ones". Eight reviews, split evenly between recommending and not, call the missions repetitive or the content recycled. One negative review puts it this way: "This is a sidequest stretched into a full DLC, and you can tell."

Four reviews object to paid extras around the pack. One player got a drop they couldn't use: "Dropped a legendary that requires a paid dlc vault card to equip." Others dislike that the new Vault Hunter, Loveless, is sold on her own ("Selling the new vault hunter seperate is wild too me") and that "the vault cards suck and should be included with dlc or free". A few positive reviews on this page are really about Loveless herself.

Four reviews spend much of their text on Borderlands 4 itself: the lack of endgame ("THERES LITERALLY NO RAID BOSSES"), the compass and radar, and whether any of the game is worth full price. One fan warns players who disliked the base game or Story Pack 1 that "you're just getting more the same just in a new location".

Three reviews have trouble finding their way. One says the island is "sometimes hard to navigate", and another reports that "Most of the time the navigation line doesn't guide you to the location". A third asks for the Borderlands 2 and 3 style compass back.