Is Borderlands 4 Worth It? A Year of Patches Later, Traversal Is the Upgrade and Loot Is the Gamble

Borderlands 4 is worth buying at its current $34.99 Steam price if you want a co-op looter-shooter and your PC runs it well. It is not worth $69.99, and it is not worth buying for the loot alone. That is the short version of this Borderlands 4 review, written a year after launch on the latest patch (1.10, 10 September 2026).

The split is cleaner than the scores suggest. Critics gave it 81 on Metacritic, while Steam players sit at 57.6% positive, a “Mixed” rating, but the two groups rarely argue about the same thing. Movement is the upgrade everybody accepts. Loot is what divides people, and the themes that tilt most negative in recent reviews are performance, price and the map, not the endgame.

I have not logged hours in Borderlands 4 for this piece. The verdict rests on 2K’s patch notes (v1.0 to v1.10), Steam’s own price and review data pulled on 7 October 2026, two critic reviews and a tally I ran on the 500 most recent English Steam reviews. Anything that is my own count says so.

Should You Buy Borderlands 4 Now? The Verdict by Player Type

Buy it now only at $34.99 or less, and only if you fit the first two rows below. Everyone else has a reason to wait, and Steam’s refund rule (under two hours played, within 14 days) covers the uncertain cases.

Five checks before you pay:

1. Match your PC to the recommended spec. Our 8GB VRAM piece lists Borderlands 4’s recommended tier at 12GB.
2. Check the price on your own store. The US $34.99 is a 50% Steam promotion with a countdown that ends on 8 October at 10:00 AM PT.
3. Ask which friends own it. Cross-play means their platform does not matter.
4. Pick an edition only after reading the upsell maths below.
5. Remember the limits in our Steam refund guide: 14 days from purchase, under two hours played.

What a Year of Patches Fixed, and What It Did Not

The game is better than the one that launched, by 2K’s own account and by the cadence of free content, but the Steam score is still only Mixed.

• Performance. The December 2025 PC update added profile-guided optimisation and cut shader-compilation hitches. 2K says average FPS rose by about 20% across minimum and recommended specs between launch and the 26 March 2026 patch. That is a developer figure, not an independent benchmark.
• Systems. Shared character progression (26 March), an opt-out toggle for it (28 May), cross-platform saves (25 June), and two level-cap raises of 10 levels each: to 60 in March, then 10 more in patch 1.10.
• Content. Free: Bloomreaper, Subjugator and Thol, the Takedown at Hadron Abyss and Circle of Slaughter. Paid: two Story Packs, four Bounty Packs and two extra Vault Hunters, C4SH and Loveless.
• Reception. On Steam, 49,995 of 86,856 reviews are positive (57.6%). Over the last 30 days it is 50% of 1,541. Metacritic’s user score is 4.8 against the critics’ 81.
• Player count. 5,903 on Steam on the evening of 7 October, a single snapshot, against a launch peak of 304,398. Cross-play adds players from the other platforms.

Monster Hunter Wilds followed a similar arc, which is why we judged Monster Hunter Wilds on the same worth-it question after a launch where its Steam score fell to roughly 18% positive. Borderlands 4 has sat at Mixed instead of collapsing like that.

Traversal: The Upgrade Nobody Argues About

Movement is the clearest improvement over Borderlands 3, and critics on both sides of the verdict say so. TheGamer’s 4/5 review calls it “best-in-class traversal” and says the game feels “designed to keep you moving, moving, moving at all times.” Full Cleared, the more lukewarm of the two (“more Borderlands”), still says your Vault Hunter “feels a lot more nimble.”

The mechanism is vertical control. The Borderlands wiki lists mantling and the crouch-slide as Borderlands 3’s movement additions, and GamingBolt says the third game only “dabbled a bit” with mobility. Borderlands 4 adds a double jump, a mid-air dash, a glide and a grapple. Air options let you change direction after leaving the ground, which is why the reviewers tie movement to combat: TheGamer says the glider lets you “snipe your earthbound foes while maneuvering across the sky,” and Full Cleared singles out the air dash for dodging.

The grapple is the exception. Full Cleared calls it the biggest disappointment, something that “really felt like it was tacked on midway through development,” and wants far more grapple points in the world. We cover all four abilities, the three glide upgrades and the full grapple argument in our complete Borderlands 4 guide and its 4 traversal abilities.

Players are not fighting about any of this. Movement words appear in 5% of positive and 3% of negative recent Steam reviews, so it is the baseline you get, not the reason people buy or leave.

The Loot Grind: Where Players Actually Split

Loot is the real dividing line, because the same system gets praised and cursed in equal measure. Loot words show up in 11% of positive and 10% of negative recent Steam reviews. A flaw would skew negative; an even split is what a divisive feature looks like.

The design is a boss-farming loop. 2K’s endgame overview says dedicated drops, where specific bosses carry specific items, were “inspired by player feedback,” and that Moxxi’s Big Encore Machine lets you re-fight a beaten boss for Eridium without reloading the game. The complaint arrived within weeks. A Gameranx roundup of player reactions quotes one player saying Gearbox cut world drops well but then made dedicated drops “so low,” and a defender saying the kill-loot-repeat loop has “drastically less session friction” than a Terramorphous kill in Borderlands 2. A third commenter splits the difference: it is faster, but dedicated drops “shouldn’t be THAT rare.”

Gearbox answered with a run of changes, all from 2K’s patch notes:

The biggest takeaway: the odds moved five times in seven months, but 2K publishes no base drop percentages, so nobody outside Gearbox can say how much better they are. The pressure valves are guaranteed ones. The Weekly Wildcard Mission carries a guaranteed Legendary, and Maurice’s Black Market machine sells Legendaries for cash, with an inventory that differs per player.

Loot is not the only grind complaint. TheGamer’s reviewer notes that enemies scale to your level, so when a chokepoint boss steps from level 30 to 31 as you level up, “the grind feels a little pointless.” My read: if you enjoy repeating a chosen boss through Big Encore, the loop works. If you expect a Legendary on a schedule, you will be annoyed, and no published figure would settle the argument either way.

Endgame: What Unlocks After the Campaign, and How Long It Runs

The endgame is free, sits behind finishing the campaign, and has gained a major piece six times in nine months. 2K gives no hours figure for any of it.

• Difficulty ladder. Finishing the campaign opens Ultimate Vault Hunter (UVH) mode with five levels at launch, each unlocked by a Wildcard Mission: a replay with a twist. In Full Cleared’s run, one step meant every enemy only died to critical hits. UVHM 6 arrived in December and UVHM 7 in May. True Mode scales enemies as if four players were present, whatever your party size.
• Raids and the Takedown. Bloomreaper and the Subjugator and Thol fight pay out in tiers from Bronze to Platinum depending on your clear time. The Takedown at Hadron Abyss is an underwater gauntlet that ends with the Child of Terramorphous. Circle of Slaughter is a wave-survival mode.
• Weekly rotation. A Big Encore boss, a Wildcard Mission and Maurice’s machine change every week.
• Account-wide power. Specializations, an XP bar that opens after the campaign and levels hundreds of times, plus the level cap (now 10 above March’s 60).

The paid packs add story areas and loot pools. The difficulty tiers, raids and Takedown are free updates. Reviewers who write on Steam had a median 46 hours played when positive and 37 hours when negative. That is how long they stayed, not how long the content lasts. Endgame words appear in 5% of negative and 2% of positive recent reviews; a report from October 2025 blamed limited endgame content, low drop rates and performance for the early player drop, but endgame is not a headline complaint in the latest reviews.

What the 500 Most Recent Steam Reviews Argue About

Performance, price and the map divide recent reviewers more than loot, endgame or movement do. This is my own tally of the 500 most recent English reviews at 7 October 2026 (written 22 September to 7 October; 259 positive, 241 negative, 51.8% positive).

Method: each review was searched for theme words (for example “stutter,” “crash” and “fps” for performance; “loot,” “drop rate” and “legendar” for loot). One review can match several themes and a mention is not always a complaint, so read the table as direction, not measurement. The sample’s 51.8% positive sits close to Steam’s own 50% for the last 30 days.

Which Edition? The Upsell Maths

Buy the base game unless you already know you will play the DLC. If you do know, the top edition is the cheapest way to get it. The maths below uses Steam’s US prices on 7 October, during the anniversary sale 2K announced.

Price each jump on its own, the way we priced the Forza Horizon 6 premium edition and whether the upsell pays off. Standard to Deluxe is +$15 on sale for content Steam sells at $27.99. Deluxe to Super Deluxe is another +$15 for a pack Steam sells at $34.99. Bought separately at today’s discounts, the base game plus both bundles is $97.97 against $64.99 for Super Deluxe, a saving of $32.98, assuming each edition matches the bundle it is paired with and only if you would play all of it. The packs are reachable early (Story Packs are recommended at level 13 and up), so you can judge them within a few sessions.

Buy Now, Wait or Skip: A Short Decision Tree

• Does your PC or console run it at settings you can live with? No or unsure: wait, or buy and test inside the refund window. Yes: next question.
• Is it $34.99 or less where you live? No: wait. Gearbox has already run 50% off once, so the price is not fixed at $69.99. Yes: next question.
• Do you want to play with friends, or a long campaign? Either: buy the base game. Neither: skip.
• Is a Legendary on a schedule your main reason? Yes: this is the game’s weakest promise, so reread the loot section before paying.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Borderlands 4 worth $69.99?

No, in my judgement. A game that has needed a year of patches, sits at 57.6% on Steam and was marked 50% off for its own anniversary is hard to justify at $69.99. At $34.99 it clears the bar for co-op fans; at $69.99 you are paying a launch premium.

Is Borderlands 4 still badly optimised on PC?

It is better, not fixed. 2K reports a roughly 20% average FPS gain and fewer crashes since launch, yet performance words still appear in 31% of recent negative reviews and 25% of positive ones. Full Cleared needed DLSS and frame generation to hold 90+ FPS at 4K on an RTX 5090 in its launch-month review, an older figure. Use the refund window rather than trusting anyone’s average.

Is Borderlands 4 better than Borderlands 3?

On movement, yes, by every critic source I used: TheGamer calls the game the best the series has ever felt to play. On story, reviewers are split: Full Cleared says “part of the series’ soul feels missing.” On loot it depends whether you enjoy farming specific bosses, because that is the system Borderlands 4 chose.

Do I need the DLC to reach the endgame?

No. The Ultimate Vault Hunter ladder, both raid bosses, the Takedown, Circle of Slaughter and the level cap are all free. The paid packs add story areas, loot pools and two extra Vault Hunters.

Is the grapple hook a reason to buy Borderlands 4?

No. It is the most contested part of the movement kit, and the reviews I read give their praise to the double jump, dash and glide. Treat the grapple as a bonus on top of a good traversal suite.

Verified on 7 October 2026 against patch 1.10 (10 September 2026) and the 1 October weekly rotation. Prices are US Steam store figures; the 50% promotion ends on 8 October at 10:00 AM PT, and DLC discounts have their own timing. Values may change with updates.

Sources

1. 2K Games. Borderlands 4 Update Notes — v1.0 to v1.10 and weekly activities. 2K Games
2. 2K Games. Borderlands 4 endgame details: Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, dedicated drops, and more. 2K Games
3. 2K Games. PC performance status update. 2K Games
4. 2K Games. Borderlands 4 Free Play Weekend and anniversary sales. 2K Games
5. Valve. Borderlands 4 — Steam store page, edition and DLC prices, and public review data, pulled 7 October 2026. Steam
6. Metacritic. Borderlands 4. Metacritic
7. King, A. Borderlands 4 review (25 September 2025). TheGamer
8. Full Cleared. Borderlands 4 Review. Full Cleared
9. Borderlands Wiki. Borderlands 3. Fandom
10. GamingBolt. Borderlands 4 vs. Borderlands 3 — 15 Big Differences. GamingBolt
11. Gameranx. Borderlands 4 players debate whether game’s drop rates are good. Gameranx
12. Outlook Respawn. Borderlands 4 loses 85% of Steam players since launch (17 October 2025). Outlook Respawn
13. Switchblade Gaming. Own tally of the 500 most recent English Steam reviews (22 September to 7 October 2026), keyword match by theme. Steam review data

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.