Borderlands 4 has massive potential, as one of the smoothest, most fun titles in the entire series. Sadly, its launch has been marred by hordes of negative reviews citing performance issues, thanks largely to its reliance on Unreal Engine 5.
Just so you’re aware, here are the minimum specifications on Steam:
As you can see, an old RTX 2070 should be enough to get, oh, at least 30 fps on low settings and 1080p, right? That’s more or less what I personally expect minimum specifications to get you. Well, as one user puts it, “even me with a 4070ti super can barely get 60fps.”
If it stopped there, perhaps we could chalk it up to individual issues on a single PC, but it doesn’t. In fact, 39% of the English reviews are negative, and almost exclusively cite performance issues as the problem.
“None of my friends can get the game to start past main menu” said one dissatisfied Steam user. “The stutters are constant, the crashes are brutal, and it feels like the game fights you harder than the bosses do” said another, and the reviews go on.
Most of these reviews meet the minimum specifications and more. Many seem to even meet the recommended specs, but are seeing frequent crashes, massive stutters, and overall terrible performance.
It’s a real shame, since we’ve all been waiting for Borderlands 4 for quite some time. But for those who have beastly machines, the game has been fun so far. Most of those on high-end systems have also mentioned performance problems in the reviews, but they also comment on how good the game is so far.
So while many of the positive reviews also mention the poor optimization, they can at least run the game and are having fun. “World events feel fun and interesting and the world is beautiful,” says one user, while another says, “Tons of quests and side quests and side-side quests, loot everywhere, and just plain fun.”
Overall, it looks like a great game plagued, simply, by UE5’s well-known performance issues. Hopefully, most of it can be patched out, and we can all enjoy Borderlands 4 on reasonable specs.
2K Games has released an optimization guide for those on Nvidia GPUs, so if you’ve bought the game and you’re having trouble, it could be worth checking out.
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Published: Sep 12, 2025 03:46 am