This week I've been: Playing Silksong, preparing to play Borderlands 4, and likely upsetting you because I put your favourite game at the wrong spot on this list. A thousand apologies.
Last week I was: Thinking too much about Borderlands 4's story, and being proven wrong by FF14's primo challenge runner about MMOs.
Look at me. I know what you are. I know your YouTube recs are full of tier lists. I know you secretly click on rankings just to have imaginary shower-fights with their authors. And I know that this is a weirdly aggressive way to open an article, and for that I apologise, but also I'll be bringing knuckledusters to the bathroom. Anyway, Borderlands 4 is coming out soon, and I'm feeling nostalgic.
With Gearbox making all sorts of promises about how this one's going to be the biggest, best, and most badass entry into the series, I figure I'd vigorously apply my opinion to the roster, an opinion hard-earned by playing every Borderlands game to completion over these long 16 years.
I've got at least a few takes in the chamber, so here we go—get locked and loaded. Or loaded, and then locked. I'm not your dad. From order of worst to best, here's my personal rankings of the Borderlands library:
5. Borderlands (the first one)
If 2009's Borderlands is your favourite vintage, hear me out: I do not think you are wrong. "Worst" doesn't necessarily mean "bad".
While in spirit it's absolutely the game that started it all, and thus ought to have a higher spot on this list, the OG Borderlands really is just Very Okay. One of the series' biggest strengths, its reliability and unchanging gameplay loop, also means you can track its improvement on a more-or-less linear curve.
Which makes Borderlands the least interesting of the bunch. Movement's slow and plodding, the pacing—especially in the early-game—is like moving through treacle, and the story's just sort of there. In a vacuum, Borderlands deserves credit (or perhaps blame) for kicking off the looter-shooter movement in earnest, and doing a halfway-decent job at it.
But the newer kids on the block are doing a better job, it's just a 16-year old game.
If you want to play a Borderlands game, I cannot think of a single reason to go back to this one unless you'd like a nostalgia trip—or are just really into the way its Vault Hunters handle. Otherwise, there's just no real cause to get back on that bus. Unless you'd like to hear No Rest for the Wicked again.
4. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
There's nothing wrong with Tiny Tina's Wonderlands—I had a good time playing it—but if we match it up against the rest of the roster, it feels more like an elaborate DLC than a fully fledged Borderlands game.
The setting is a fun send-up for plenty of TTRPG-based jokes, and I don't hate the cute overworld map, but I think its class structure and spell system are easily the weakest build mechanics in the series.
They're customisable, and it is neat being able to combine two classes into one character, but one of the series' biggest strengths is the fact each Vault Hunter has a unique identity that really shapes how you play. By comparison, the Fatemaker's classes are light on flavour.
Rather than playstyle-defining abilities like Brick's berserk mode or Zer0's Decepti0n, most of Wonderland's class abilities are just things you hammer off-cooldown. The multiclassing aspect technically increases variety, but also mandates that no one class rock the boat too much, which feels like it leaves Gearbox a lot less wiggle-room.
What's the point if I don't get to see Brick play D&D like in BL2's Assault on Dragon Keep?"
It also means those core abilities aren't nearly as explored. While Zer0, for example, can use his Decepti0n as a weak-spot highlighter for sniping, a decoy-bomb and elemental kunai generator, or an excuse to get really close to someone and stab them, the Brr-zerker is basically always going to be spinning at someone and hitting them with their axe.
On the plus side, it's got a solid voice cast and lands some good bits, though it whiffs on the promise of the premise—including none of the game's OG Vault Hunters and instead plonking you with Andy Samberg (basically playing himself) and a robot voiced by Wanda Sykes. Who are both fun enough but like, what's the point if I don't get to see Brick play D&D like in BL2's Assault on Dragon Keep?
3. Borderlands 3
Hey hey hey hey—pitchforks away. If you bounced right off Borderlands 3 I absolutely do not blame you. Yes, the story was atrocious, yes, the characters were annoying, yes, the memes were several years too late. Take a second.
First off, it pleases me to have Borderlands 3 be the third-best Borderlands game in a numerical, aesthetic sense. Second off, while Borderlands 3's story was insufferable, its moment-to-moment action is the best out of Gearbox's whole catalogue.
It's a mashup of every game that came before it, taking BL1's foundation and BL2's more intricate classes and loot, then stacking the entire series movement tech—butt slams, mantling, and sliding—to make it all sing. I'll happily die on the sword that Borderlands 3 has the best-feeling combat of the entire series.
It helps that I played Zane, whose absurd movement speed gave me enough joy that I was able to push through my woes with its narrative—and hey, all of its DLC is pretty good, so it's got that going for it.
2. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
It's called a prequel, Pitchford. We already had a word for it. Anyway.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is genuinely great, if you can forgive all the space-Australian accents. A solid story with some surprisingly decent character work, a novel setting, some low-gravity fun, and a splendid roster of Vault Hunters with novel shticks.
Athena in particular is not only being super cool—there's a reason Tales from the Borderlands nabbed her—but having one of the most satisfying Vault Hunter skills in the entire series. I will never tire of hurling her Kinetic Aspis at a bunch of mooks.
It also added the butt-slam, which is my single favourite addition to the series' movement—more than mantling, more than sliding. Being able to decide "hey, I don't want to be in the air anymore" will never not be satisfying, especially since doing so results in an explosion. And it's Borderlands, explosions are like 90% of the entire point.
1. Borderlands 2
You probably saw this one coming—while I prefer BL3's movement, Borderlands 2 has it all. A stacked roster of great Vault Hunters with unique playstyles. A story that actually manages to be consistently entertaining the whole way through. A villain so charismatic it cast a literal shadow over the rest of the franchise. Jokes that are actually funny.
Every other Borderlands game has some sort of caveat involved—BL1 shows its age, Wonderlands' classes aren't as interesting, BL3's story is obnoxious, the Pre-Sequel's oxygen mechanics are weird—but not Borderlands 2.
Borderlands 2 nailed every single positive aspect of the Borderlands series—and the only way I could feasibly see it improved would be some kind of remake with BL3's movement tech rolled into it. Oh, and Tales from the Borderlands' understanding of what makes its setting good.
Honourable mention: Tales From the Borderlands
I can't rightly put Tales anywhere on this list because it's not actually a Borderlands game—it's a bunch of cutscenes with choices and QTEs in them—but it does something the series never quite has. It really gets the potential potency of the Borderlands vibe even more than Gearbox does.
The elevator pitch of "A Telltale Borderlands game" absolutely should not work, but it does. Borderlands 2 had a great villain and a semi-decent cast of characters, but in Tales, you like basically everybody. Rhys and Fiona play off each other with buckets of charm, Vaughn is just a little guy, Sasha is carrying the brain cells for the whole group, and Loader Bot is my son and I will die for him.
Moreover, while the Borderlands franchise struggles to find good character work and dialogue from entry-to-entry, Tales is brimming with it in a way that feels nigh-effortless.
Turns out, the funniest joke you can tell in Borderlands is to have its occupants—surrounded by space magic, Lovecraftian vault monsters, madcap bandits with buzzsaws, and comically evil corporations—just be normal people.
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