So ... which Vault Hunter is right for you in Borderlands 4?
The Siren, The Exo-Soldier, The Forgeknight, and The Gravitar are finally here.
There's a new Borderlands game out today (Borderlands 4, if you've somehow missed that), and that means new Vault Hunters to choose from. If this is your first Borderlands game, Vault Hunters act like classes, but they're distinct characters with their own look and personality — you won't be building out your own RP character in this series, so the personality comes packaged with the abilities.
Borderlands games are, typically, pretty long, so your choice of starting character is something you'll be stuck with for a while. Gearbox has confirmed that you can start a new character of a different class that starts at an advanced level once you finish the campaign with another character.
Even with that calming foresight, though, you do have to pick someone to play through the campaign with first. Below, we're going to briefly discuss each of the Vault Hunters in Borderlands 4 so you don't have to deliberate too much once you're able to boot up the game.
Vex - The Siren
Vex is Borderlands 4's Siren — the one class that every mainline Borderlands game has had — but she doesn't operate exactly the same as Lilith and the others. Instead of being the queen of elemental damage, Vex is more about summoning allies to do her bidding. She can clone herself, or summon a big mean cat to run around and deal damage to enemies.
Think of her less like the team's classic wizard and more like their warlock, if you're the variety of nerd where that makes sense. Your goal here is to work in conjunction with your pets to deal high amounts of damage and devastate the battlefield.
Rafa - The Exo-Soldier
Rafa is Borderlands 4's version of the soldier, AKA The Boring One.
Not really, but more in the way that Soldier 76 is "boring" in Overwatch. It doesn't mean he can't do interesting stuff, and it doesn't mean he's not fun. It just means "he best at shoot gun" in a game where you can do a lot more than that.
Rafa does take things in a more interesting direction than some of the soldier-like characters before him. Instead of dropping a dumb turret or whatever (love you, Roland), Rafa can augment himself with a few different abilities and passives. One skill tree gives Rafa a Mega Man-ass arm cannon that manifests to shoot a quick shot at enemies. He can use other skill trees to generate big Blastoise cannons on his shoulders. And like all good "press W for forward" classes, he has a spin-to-win attack with big Arc-Knives.
One of the more interesting things about Rafa comes in the shape of the Ordnance, which is a new kind of gear slot that all Vault Hunters use in Borderlands 4. It's essentially a heavy weapon that doesn't take up one of your normal gun slots. And while, as we mentioned before, they're accessible to everyone, Rafa can really specialize into them in some fun and interesting ways.
Amon - The Forgeknight
If Rafa is the boring soldier, Amon is whatever the opposite of that is. He's the muscle. But the burning, freezing, slicing, "hell yeah" kinda muscle. He's also the tank, and has a variety of different ways to jump around the battlefield smashing people with a lot more than guns.
All of Amon's main skills involve summoning various weapons, be it a shield and flail-thing to defend himself, a rocket fist to paunch enemies, or two big elemental axes to slice stuff up. That's all pretty fun, and he can lean heavily into just being a bruiser. But what's interesting about Amon is that he's actually one of two Vault Hunters who excels at dealing elemental damage. That's an interesting choice for the big beefcake character, and it's nice to see Gearbox moving away from Sirens being the only ones who get to roast their enemies. He can also specialize into ordinances.
Harlowe - The Gravitar
Harlowe is the nerd. She's the gadget gal. And she fits a lot more into the identity of what past Siren classes have been than Vex. By which I mean she's very support-oriented, which will make her a huge boon in team play.
But also she has nukes, so it's not like you're gonna have a bad time if you're a primarily solo player.
Harlowe is the other element-heavy user next to Amon. In addition to her various elemental effects, she's able to control the battlefield with her skills. She can throw a big-ass ball that freezes and poisons enemies before exploding. She can put enemies in bubbles and skeet shoot them out of the air or just yeet them around. And she can drop a powerful Energy Field nearby that blasts foes with elemental energy.