Kicking off in 2009 the Borderlands series has become Gearbox’s biggest franchise over the course of multiple games, and a disastrous movie which flopped at the box office. What better time to rank all the Borderlands games from best to worst, then?
Throughout its ups and downs, the Borderlands series has carved out a special place in my heart. Its blend of shooting, looting and stupidity are like a comfortable blanket spattered in the blood and gore, and peppered with a few bullet holes.
So with the new film landing with all the grace of an elephant skydiving off a cliff with a faulty parachute, let’s take a moment to rank the Borderlands games. Now, obviously this is a completely personal list. I’m sure your ranking will be vastly different from mine, so feel free to drop a comment with how you would rate them.
Finally, before we get into the list, I’ve not included a few releases: the various Collection’s, including the Handsome Collection, aren’t here, for example. Nor is Borderlands 2 VR, or the standalone Assault on Dragon Keep. They didn’t feel like they needed to be on the list as they are essentially either the base game with a few improvements or an add-on.
Borderlands 2 is so good that Gearbox has spent every game in the series since trying to chase the magic and never quite capturing it. It’s a fantastic looter-shooter, a riot from start to finish and a damn-near perfect evolution of what came before.
Part of the magic stems from leading arsehole Handsome Jack who quickly became one of the most beloved villains in all of gaming. Despite having little actual screen-time, his sarcastic voice follows you around on the radio, chiming in to remind you that you suck. Or to inform you that he’s so incredibly rich that he bought a pony made of diamond and named it Butt Stallion.
Handsome Jack was representative of the expanding storytelling. The first game was often criticised for its paper-thin plot and characters. Gearbox responded perfectly, crafting a more engaging story that even managed to deliver a couple of emotional moments, too. It amped up the humour as well, though that did come at the cost of the first game’s darker edge.
The gameplay systems are a massive leap over the first game, vastly expanding on not only the weapons but on the skill trees as well. The level of build crafting available in Borderlands 2 is leagues ahead of the first game, and despite having played through it numerous times, I still haven’t tried out all of the different styles in Borderlands 2. It makes the game insanely replayable.
Borderlands 2 also boasts some excellent DLC, which comes packaged in The Handsome Collection for modern consoles. Two extra playable characters were added, but the real highlight was Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep which would wind up being the inspiration for another entry on this list. Chock-full of pop-culture references, from Dark Souls to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Borderlands 3 successfully builds upon the solid gameplay foundation laid by its predecessors. The improved movement mechanics, like the ability to slide and mantle, add an extra layer of dynamism to the already fun and frenetic combat. This is the best the series has played, boasting the smoothest gunplay.
The weapon selection is somehow even bigger and more insane than ever. We’re talking guns that turn into walking turrets. But the best thing is that the guns in Borderlands 3 feel like they hang around a little longer before you throw them away for the next, new shiny weapon. In the original game, a legendary gun was something you’d use for a while, whereas Borderlands 2 the guns came so thick and so fast that even legendary weapons were expendable. Borderlands 3 strikes a solid balance between the two games.
Additionally, Borderlands 3 introduces a host of compelling new characters each with their own unique skill trees, offering an unprecedented level of customization and replayability. There’s plenty of cool builds to play around with.
Where Borderlands 3 falters is its villains, a duo of idiots who try to emulate the sarcastic bite of Handsome Jack and fail at almost every turn. They end up being nothing more than irritating roadblocks that derail the whole damn game every time they pop onto the screen. It’s a shame because their social media influencer gimmick and their army of drooling fans is a cool concept, but it just never works.
Whether you’re looting, shooting, or exploring the far reaches of the galaxy, Borderlands 3 is a good time, but the weaker story, characters and humour mean it can’t beat out Borderlands 2.
3. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Based around the Dungeons & Dragons inspired expansion for Borderlands 2, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands injects Borderlands with a hefty dose of fantasy. On paper, this should have been my favourite game of the entire franchise.
The difficulty in ranking Wonderland’s comes from Tiny Tina being the focal point. Like many Borderlands characters, her personality can be grating which is why she is best deployed as a support character, much like Claptrap. Putting her front and centre risks making the character going from a loud but kind of funny distraction to a full-blown annoyance. Personally, I like her enough that she didn’t end up destroying my enjoyment, but it’s understandable why some people shut the game off after the first hour and never went back.
Gameplay wise, this is a straight-forward Borderlands game but it does use the Bunkers & Badasses premise to add a few fun wrinkles, like being able to equip armour and magic alongside the usual firearms. By the end, I felt like the game could have done more with its cool premise, but it was still a great time.
4. Tales from the Borderlands
Tales from the Borderlands is a tricky game to rank because it’s so fundamentally different from the other games in the series. Developed by Telltale, TFTB swaps out the looting and shooting for a narrative-driven adventure game set in the Borderlands universe.
By the time this game released, Telltale’s gameplay and game engine were showing their age and the game was understandably criticised for it. But outside of Handsome Jack in Borderlands 2, this is the sharpest writing in the entire series. It takes the deliberately cringe humour of the main series and turns it into something deeper, as well as bringing back the much darker undertone and humour of the first game. Strongly written characters, funny jokes and a smart story make this the best-written game in the franchise.
5. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Following the success of Borderlands 2 and the glowing reception of Handsome Jack, Gearbox decided to double-down on their villain by giving him his very own game, with 2K Australia handling most of the developement.
The Pre-Sequel takes place in the events between the first two games and features four new playable characters, all of whom were bosses that players fought previously. Leading this rag-tag gang of misfits is Jack himself. The narrative follows Jack’s decent into villainy, and does a pretty good job of it. Jack isn’t quite as entertaining as his Handsome Jack persona in Borderlands 2, but because of that he’s also more human.
In terms of gameplay though, the Pre-Sequel definitely feels like a big expansion rather than a new game. The Moon setting isn’t visually interesting, though the low-gravity is entertaining to jump around in. And we get the Butt-slam special move, so that’s someting.
Overall, a solid entry in the franchise but also the one most likely forgotten about. Honestly, I briefly forgot about it while writing this list.
Ok, ok, I get it. Putting the original Borderlands so far down the list might be a controversial decision, and I kind of agree. Hear me out: the original Borderlands is a seminal game, both for the industry and for myself.
I still own my Xbox 360 copy of the game as well as the official strategy guide which I remember reading on a train coming back from GAME where I picked up it and the game. And on the industry, it became the foundation for looter-shooters going forward, continuing to influence games to this day. The satisfying shooting, the wealth of cool weapons to mess around with and the excellent co-op all made Borderlands addictive as hell.
But when you fire up the game in 2024 I think it’s fair to say that Borderlands doesn’t play anywhere near as well as the newer titles in the series, and its emptier world and paper-thin story leave a lot to be desired compared to its sequel. That doesn’t mean its bad or it shouldn’t be played, but if I was to suggest a Borderlands game to a newcomer I’d probably just tell them to start with the second one.
There’s no denying the vibe that Borderlands has, though. The large, barren environments, dead bodies, cobbled together buildings and psychotic inhabitants all paint the planet of Pandora as a fucked up wasteland. The humour in Borderlands is darker than the sequels. The world is messed up and the people on Pandora clearly use a sick sense of humour to cope with their despair and general apathy toward life. As the series went on the humour would become zanier, sillier and ruder but also lost sight of the darker heart of Borderlands.
And let’s be real, that trailer with No Rest for the Wicked by Don’t Cage the Elephant? Killer.
7. New Tales from the Borderlands
New Tales from the Borderlands came out in 2022 and was envisioned as a spiritual successor to Tales from the Borderlands. Developer Telltale had closed their doors in 2018, so Gearbox tasked Gearbox Quebec with crafting a new Borderlands spin-off in the style of Telltale and the result was…well, it wasn’t good.
Gearbox Quebec had no experience with branching storylines or plotting out how player decisions could impact a narrative in meaningful ways, so they were already starting from the back foot. On top of that, the writing just wasn’t as strong as the original Tales from the Borderlands, a huge problem in a genre where the writing and narrative are everything. Part of the problem is that New Tales from the Borderlands did what the franchise has been doing since Borderlands 2; failing to understand what made the humour and writing tick. Everything has to be a joke, everything has to be quirky and crazy and weird, and nothing is ever allowed to breath or be serious for a moment. The few moments in which New Tales from the Borderlands tries to dig deep and draw out some genuine emotion fails because everything else is a joke.
It didn’t do much to wow critics and gamers on the gameplay front, either. Quebec aped the original Telltale style quite closely, but even when Telltale closed in 2018 that style was outdated and in dire need of an update, so by 2022 people just weren’t interested.
Even now, it has a “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam, the lowest of the entire franchise.