Seven years after Borderlands 2, five if you count the Pre-Sequel, we finally have a new Borderlands game. A new group of vault hunters tasked with exactly that, hunting vaults. Billions of guns, new skills to acquire and bandits to kill, finally it’s here. Borderlands 3 is more Borderlands which I could not be happier about, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows unfortunately, as a really poorly optimized game is what we got at launch.

There is a lot to love about Borderlands 3, specifically the fact that it is just more Borderlands. Diehard fans of the franchise will be happy to know that things aren’t too overly complicated in this game and your muscle memory will very quickly kick in. Couple this with some much needed quality of life fixes, and we have a brand new Borderlands game that feels very refined.

The four new Vault Hunters are some of the best characters the franchise has had to offer. Amara (this games Siren) can lift enemies up in the air and have your team focus fire on them, FL4K and their different pets can assist in the fight almost acting as an additional teammate, Zane can spawn his digital clone, confusing the enemy and Moze brings out her Iron Bear mech to mow down anything in her path.

While Borderlands 3 has its bright spots, this was unfortunately one of the messier launches for a game this year. I was playing the game on my Xbox One X and it seemed extremely poorly optimized. Constant frame drops and glitches, alongside the fact that my console actually crashed completely on 3 separate occasions, had me very frustrated with my overall experience playing the game. All of this, to an extent, can be excused, but the menu system was completely broken and cannot be forgiven. Opening up the menu often froze the game completely for a few seconds, then once accessed, only ran at a consistent 15-20 frames-per-second.

To hear more of my thoughts on Borderlands 3, as well as my official score for the game, you can check out my video review in the player above. For more gaming content, head over to the Collider Games channel.

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