The epitome of the AAA Sloppening. Pay more for less.

As a forward, the gunplay is easily BEST in the franchise here. Not that surprising of a revelation, BL3 was best in franchise before, but I will commend the few changes made here are positive and make a strong improvement in gunplay feel.

I want to emphasize, GUNPLAY does not equal GAMEPLAY in modern Borderlands. I played the game solo and tried to interact with as much of the open-world as possible. I am a die-hard fan of modern Ubislop so I'm no stranger to a bloated open-world. In my 60 hr playthrough, less than half of that time was gunplay. The modern Borderlands problems of 'sit tight and listen', 'run around and press interact on stuff', and a new addition, 'go pick up this thing that removes your ability to drive and manually walk that back to a base 1 km away'. At least in Ubislop the repetitive activities are MOSTLY the action gameplay you want. This is unacceptable.

Gotta give a special shout out to the 'compass' and 'E4 guidance' systems in the game. I would honestly bring up BL3 in conversation as the best minimap in gaming for it's perfection of elevation and clarity in map design. Intuitive, easy to read, and minimizes confusion. I'm guessing making the best minimap in gaming was difficult, because they just cut the damn thing off for the sake of 'immersion'.

- First off, the compass is terrible. Every combat in BL4 ends with a mini-scavenger hunt to find the enemy that got trapped on terrain or whose AI just didn't care to engage. This would be SO MUCH LESS OF A PROBLEM with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MINIMAP. The compass does a horrible job of helping you locate the hidden enemies, is terrible at showing elevation, and the net effect is several hours of my playthough dedicated to searching for enemies that need to die to progress the objective. The compass took hours of my life in a different method as well. If you try to collect as many collectibles as possible then you'll be spamming the E4 button often because it acts as a pseudo-eagle vision. Here's the thing, the eagle vision will discover collectibles, but it won't show-up as a ping in your hud and it won't show up in the compass. YOU HAVE TO OPEN THE MAP IN THE MENU TO SEE THE COLLECTIBLES YOU JUST REVEALED. The result is every two minutes of travel and E4 spamming you have to open the menu to see if you just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ passed five collectibles. To be fair, the compass will show you collectibles, even if you didn't put a marker on it in your map. The problem is the compass only picks up on collectibles directly infront of you in close proximity. I'd attribute about 20 hrs of my gameplay to this ♥♥♥♥.

- Secondly, the 'E4 guidance' system is a hilarious joke unless you play the game. For the sake of 'immersion', instead of a minimap you get a line of light that points you in the proper direction of your objective. Here's just a spattering of fun quirks of the guidance system in my 60 hrs: will regularly clip through terrain, on occasion will guide you in the opposite direction of your marked objective, on multiple occasions has driven me off of cliffs and out of bounds (it's painfully contrived for what is and isn't in bounds), in 2/3rds of the map the line is invisible in daylight because of high brightness surfaces, the game doesn't know how to guide you to several of it's objectives, and most frequently of all: the line will just clip through a cliff from below and give you zero idea of how to get up. Remember The Stanley Parable Adventure Line? The Adventure Line was a parody of how lazy games can ♥♥♥♥ up the most vital elements of gaming: choice, suspension of disbelief, and diversity of experience. The joke of The Stanley Parable Adventure Line is that it negates everything that makes gaming special as a medium, you aren't taking in the environment, you aren't considering your choices, and you aren't immersed. You follow the solid yellow line. I guess we shouldn't be surprised in the ♥♥♥♥-show that is 2025, the over-the-top parody that is The Stanley Parable Adventure Line would be put in a $70 game earnestly.

TL;DR: BL4's release state is best described as unacceptable. Unacceptable in terms of performance (I have a monster rig that struggles regularly here), unacceptable as a progression of the franchise, unacceptable as a story (even from modern Star Wars standards), and unacceptable in AAA gaming as a whole. You'd struggle to pass this off as a good indie game without the title. I grew up as a die-hard fan of the franchise. BL2 was all I could run on my crappy macmini back in 2014 and it flowered my appreciation of gaming. This 60 hour experience has soured me on Gearbox, looter-shooters, and most important of all, the franchise I used to love dearly. I am no longer a Borderlands fan. I will no longer have interest in new titles or DLC. I will however, keep an eye on the changes made to this game. BL4 is Cyberpunk 2077 levels of release broken, similar in terms of horrendously flawed production philosophy. If BL4 never gets the 2.0 treatment Cyberpunk 2077 got then I'm gone, and I'm gone for good. Thanks for reading.

The epitome of the AAA Sloppening. Pay more for less. As a forward, the gunplay is easily BEST in the franchise here. Not that surprising of a revelation, BL3 was best in franchise before, but I will commend the few changes made here are positive and make a strong improvement in gunplay feel. I want to emphasize, GUNPLAY does not equal GAMEPLAY in modern Borderlands. I played the game solo and tried to interact with as much of the open-world as possible. I am a die-hard fan of modern Ubislop so I'm no stranger to a bloated open-world. In my 60 hr playthrough, less than half of that time was gunplay. The modern Borderlands problems of 'sit tight and listen', 'run around and press interact on stuff', and a new addition, 'go pick up this thing that removes your ability to drive and manually walk that back to a base 1 km away'. At least in Ubislop the repetitive activities are MOSTLY the action gameplay you want. This is unacceptable. Gotta give a special shout out to the 'compass' and 'E4 guidance' systems in the game. I would honestly bring up BL3 in conversation as the best minimap in gaming for it's perfection of elevation and clarity in map design. Intuitive, easy to read, and minimizes confusion. I'm guessing making the best minimap in gaming was difficult, because they just cut the damn thing off for the sake of 'immersion'. - First off, the compass is terrible. Every combat in BL4 ends with a mini-scavenger hunt to find the enemy that got trapped on terrain or whose AI just didn't care to engage. This would be SO MUCH LESS OF A PROBLEM with a GOD DAMNED MINIMAP. The compass does a horrible job of helping you locate the hidden enemies, is terrible at showing elevation, and the net effect is several hours of my playthough dedicated to searching for enemies that need to die to progress the objective. The compass took hours of my life in a different method as well. If you try to collect as many collectibles as possible then you'll be spamming the E4 button often because it acts as a pseudo-eagle vision. Here's the thing, the eagle vision will discover collectibles, but it won't show-up as a ping in your hud and it won't show up in the compass. YOU HAVE TO OPEN THE MAP IN THE MENU TO SEE THE COLLECTIBLES YOU JUST REVEALED. The result is every two minutes of travel and E4 spamming you have to open the menu to see if you just fucking passed five collectibles. To be fair, the compass will show you collectibles, even if you didn't put a marker on it in your map. The problem is the compass only picks up on collectibles directly infront of you in close proximity. I'd attribute about 20 hrs of my gameplay to this shit. - Secondly, the 'E4 guidance' system is a hilarious joke unless you play the game. For the sake of 'immersion', instead of a minimap you get a line of light that points you in the proper direction of your objective. Here's just a spattering of fun quirks of the guidance system in my 60 hrs: will regularly clip through terrain, on occasion will guide you in the opposite direction of your marked objective, on multiple occasions has driven me off of cliffs and out of bounds (it's painfully contrived for what is and isn't in bounds), in 2/3rds of the map the line is invisible in daylight because of high brightness surfaces, the game doesn't know how to guide you to several of it's objectives, and most frequently of all: the line will just clip through a cliff from below and give you zero idea of how to get up. Remember The Stanley Parable Adventure Line? The Adventure Line was a parody of how lazy games can fuck up the most vital elements of gaming: choice, suspension of disbelief, and diversity of experience. The joke of The Stanley Parable Adventure Line is that it negates everything that makes gaming special as a medium, you aren't taking in the environment, you aren't considering your choices, and you aren't immersed. You follow the solid yellow line. I guess we shouldn't be surprised in the shit-show that is 2025, the over-the-top parody that is The Stanley Parable Adventure Line would be put in a $70 game earnestly. TL;DR: BL4's release state is best described as unacceptable. Unacceptable in terms of performance (I have a monster rig that struggles regularly here), unacceptable as a progression of the franchise, unacceptable as a story (even from modern Star Wars standards), and unacceptable in AAA gaming as a whole. You'd struggle to pass this off as a good indie game without the title. I grew up as a die-hard fan of the franchise. BL2 was all I could run on my crappy macmini back in 2014 and it flowered my appreciation of gaming. This 60 hour experience has soured me on Gearbox, looter-shooters, and most important of all, the franchise I used to love dearly. I am no longer a Borderlands fan. I will no longer have interest in new titles or DLC. I will however, keep an eye on the changes made to this game. BL4 is Cyberpunk 2077 levels of release broken, similar in terms of horrendously flawed production philosophy. If BL4 never gets the 2.0 treatment Cyberpunk 2077 got then I'm gone, and I'm gone for good. Thanks for reading.