By Mollie Taylor

Copyright pcgamer

Skip to main content

Close main menu

THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES

View Profile

Search PC Gamer

PC Gaming Show

Movies & TV

Affiliate links

Meet the team

Community guidelines

About PC Gamer

PC Gamer Magazine Subscription

Why subscribe?

Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming mag
Try a single issue or save on a subscription
Issues delivered straight to your door or device

From£35.99Subscribe now

Borderlands 4
Essential Hardware

Battlefield 6

Don’t miss these

Is Borderlands 4 the series at ‘its most potent’, or ‘uninspired’ and ‘painfully dull’? The PC Gamer team is divided

I’ve already spent hours making builds, but I’m worried Borderlands 4’s endgame isn’t going to give me anything meaningful to do with them at launch

Borderlands 4 has ‘more passive perks than all the previous Borderlands combined’—uh, is that a good thing?

Borderlands 4 review round-up: ‘The best Borderlands game I’ve ever played—but with a small hitch’

I’m ranking every Borderlands game ahead of BL4’s release from worst to best, because the people love their lists and I’m here to provide

Borderlands 4 devs want to redeem the series’ story, which is a tall task, since it’s always been all over the place

Borderlands 4 takes a shot at Embracer Group by naming a town filled with trash and an AI talking toilet after it

Borderlands 4 has a volume slider specifically for muting Claptrap—if you’re a coward

Do yourself a favour and turn off this annoying grapple setting in Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 live launch coverage: are you ready to loot 30 billion guns?

Borderlands 4’s campaign skips could be a double-edged sword for Gearbox

I’ve tested Borderlands 4 on a minimum spec PC and a monster RTX 5090 rig, and it runs just as ‘Borderlands-at-launch’ as you’d expect

Borderlands 4 launches to ‘mostly negative’ reviews on Steam thanks to widespread performance problems and crashes

‘Even with a 9800X3D and a 5090 it runs like absolute buttcheeks’: 2K Games posts Nvidia’s Borderlands 4 optimised settings guide, but the community is already in open revolt

Borderlands 4 certainly looks like it’s taking its story more seriously: ‘We wanted to go back to this sense of dread about the villain of our game’

Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 shed its iconic UI and all it got was this stupid live service-y inventory that doesn’t let me filter my crap properly

Mollie Taylor

16 September 2025

Bad design.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: 2K Games)

In true looter shooter fashion, Borderlands 4 never stops throwing guns, shields, grenades, and weapon enhancements in my face. Loadout experimentation has always been the name of the game, which means regular pit stops to rifle through my backpack and decide what’ll get added to my arsenal and what’ll fund my future respawns.

For a game that is so reliant on routine inventory management, Borderlands 4 has somehow managed to massively cock it up. To the point I’m confused how we’re several games deep and yet this is easily Gearbox’s worst attempt to date.
This is coming from someone who isn’t even massively fussy when it comes to clean inventory management. I just want two things: make it quick, and make it easy. Borderlands 4 does neither. Opening up the backpack greets me with a muddled array of items, which the game defaults to sorting by manufacturer. Naturally. Who doesn’t want to organise their inventory by manufacturer? Organising by recently picked up, item value, or level? Psh, who would ever need such pointless options?

Related Articles

Is Borderlands 4 the series at ‘its most potent’, or ‘uninspired’ and ‘painfully dull’? The PC Gamer team is divided

I’ve already spent hours making builds, but I’m worried Borderlands 4’s endgame isn’t going to give me anything meaningful to do with them at launch

Borderlands 4 has ‘more passive perks than all the previous Borderlands combined’—uh, is that a good thing?

If I do dare to veer off the game’s default selection, it only lasts until I tab over to a different screen. If I accidentally turn to a different page in the menu—marking an item as junk is ‘X’ while navigating to a different tab is on ‘Z’ and ‘C’, ripe for fat finger moments—returning to the backpack resets my sorting order and filters. Cool! I’m totally okay with this!

(Image credit: 2K)
It’s a small time waste that massively adds up. I have the benefit of playing with a keyboard and mouse which makes menu navigation less tedious, but I imagine it’s an even bigger frustration for those who are trying to fandangle this entire thing on a controller. Five extra seconds in the menu is five seconds I’m not spending blasting the Timekeeper’s cronies’ heads.
The backpack also, for whatever reason, lets my unequipped and equipped items mingle together in scattershot fashion. They’re not grouped up at the top or excluded from my inventory entirely, which means I’m also having to spend extra time double checking which items have a teeny-weeny checkmark in the corner.
It’s even more difficult to look for when it’s among a sea of similarly-coloured icons that display over new items. It’s the gaming equivalent of chucking clean and dirty laundry into a single basket. I shouldn’t have to sniff every sock to see if it’s been worn.

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

(Image credit: 2K)
Comparing items to each other also feels far more tedious than it should. The fact that equipped stuff is all over the shop certainly doesn’t help, and I’m wasting far more time than I should be hunting around for the two specific items I want to weigh up against each other.
I actually ended up popping back onto Borderlands 2 to compare how the entire inventory management felt, and while that game certainly doesn’t get it perfect—scrolling through a long list is a bigger pain than having it all on one screen, sure—it feels like a much more cohesive experience.
Here are some other little nitpicky gripes I have with Borderlands 4’s inventory UI:

Dropping items being keybinded to a long press. Add the ability to drop into the right-click menu, I beg of you.
Currency being hidden behind a hover-over icon rather than in plain sight. I literally had to hunt for how much money I had. I shouldn’t have to hunt!
Weapon cards are tiny. You’ve dedicated the entire screen to inventory in this game, you can make the weapon cards a little bigger to compensate.
I kind of don’t like how filtering items just darkens all the items that don’t fit the criteria. I’d much rather they disappear entirely.
Some of these are just personal preference, but the overarching issue of all this is how much of my time it unnecessarily wastes. The inventory is finicky, time-consuming, and confusing, which is a cardinal sin in a looter shooter. It’s actively curbing my desire to try stuff out, and I’m often mindlessly marking things as junk as I grab it just so I don’t have to deal with the inventory screen.
It’s a bizarre regression, especially for one of the most important elements of Borderlands’ entire gameplay loop. It should be quickly ushering me in and out with a new loot pool to go wild with, but instead I’m wading through its swampy interface, slowly hovering over each item to figure out just what the hell is going on.
It’s stuff that can mostly be fixed with a few patches, something I sincerely hope Gearbox does as a priority. Because if you’re going to de-juice your vibe by swapping out the series’ iconic use of diegetic UI for something I’ve seen in every other videogame, at least make that choice worth it.

Borderlands 4: Everything you need to know.
Borderlands 4 Shift codes: The new key connection.
Borderlands 4 Black Market location: New legendaries, no grind.
Borderlands 4 characters: Meet your new Vault Hunters and find out who’s strongest.
Borderlands 4 Harlowe builds: The amped-up Gravitar.
Borderlands 4 Rafa builds: The speed-demon Exo-Soldier.
Borderlands 4 Vex builds: The spooky Siren.
Borderlands 4 Amon builds: The fierce Forgeknight.

Mollie Taylor

Social Links Navigation
Features Producer

Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she’s not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Is Borderlands 4 the series at ‘its most potent’, or ‘uninspired’ and ‘painfully dull’? The PC Gamer team is divided

I’ve already spent hours making builds, but I’m worried Borderlands 4’s endgame isn’t going to give me anything meaningful to do with them at launch

Borderlands 4 has ‘more passive perks than all the previous Borderlands combined’—uh, is that a good thing?

Borderlands 4 review round-up: ‘The best Borderlands game I’ve ever played—but with a small hitch’

I’m ranking every Borderlands game ahead of BL4’s release from worst to best, because the people love their lists and I’m here to provide

Borderlands 4 devs want to redeem the series’ story, which is a tall task, since it’s always been all over the place

Latest in FPS

Is Borderlands 4 the series at ‘its most potent’, or ‘uninspired’ and ‘painfully dull’? The PC Gamer team is divided

How to get the Hot Slugger in Borderlands 4

Where is Maurice’s Black Market location in Borderlands 4 this week?

Nothing is safe from Borderlands 4’s ‘infinite damage’ build that wipes out bosses in less than 10 seconds

One of Borderlands 4’s best grenades is a dead fish, and you don’t even need to shoot your guns to get it

Do yourself a favour and turn off this annoying grapple setting in Borderlands 4

Latest in Features

Borderlands 4 shed its iconic UI and all it got was this stupid live service-y inventory that doesn’t let me filter my crap properly

I thought the new space factory management sim from the creators of Dorfromantik would be just as cosy, but now I’m panicking over my twisted interplanetary production lines

Are high-end GPUs even worth buying anymore? I’m starting to have my doubts

Of all that’s wireless in this gaming life, gaming keyboards aren’t just entirely pointless they’re [expletive deleted] annoying

Five new Steam games you probably missed (September 15, 2025)

I was ready to be a crab about Silksong in the face of its memetic hype, but the game is simply too good

HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES
LATEST GAME REVIEWS

Best gaming laptop in 2025: I’ve tested a ton of notebooks this generation and these are the best in every category

Best Hall effect keyboards in 2025: the fastest, most customizable keyboards for competitive gaming

Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC

Best graphics cards in 2025: I’ve tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today’s top cards

Best gaming chair in 2025: I’ve tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I’d suggest for any PC gamer

Humanscale Freedom Chair with Headrest review

Strange Antiquities review

Hollow Knight: Silksong review

Asus ProArt Case PA401 review

Acer Predator Helios 18 AI gaming laptop review

PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

Contact Future’s experts

Terms and conditions

Privacy policy

Cookies policy

Advertise with us

Accessibility Statement

Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury,

BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait…