I love borderlands, but no one can deny this game has it's flaws.
The games length shouldn't be questioned, it will probably take you around 33 hours or around there to complete it on one playthrough assuming you do all the side missions, so length was not a problem.
The visual were upgraded, and the physx is nice however if you use AMD/ATI you cannot use the physx to its best capabilities without suffering from insane performance loss. Why they would target specific hardware like this in the PC business of gaming is still confusing to me. As someone with an ATI card I feel like I got slapped in the face. I mean don't get me wrong I can play the game on it's highest setting with 80 framerate but if I try to use physx I can go down to 10 frames which isn't playable. This is just unfair to be honest. All that being said, the visuals are in fact much better than the first game.
I would say the classes still need some balancing, but they are all fun to play in their own ways. They are much more fun to play than the borderlands 1 classes. I feel there is no distinction between them at all, the classes were definitely improved upon in BL2.
The loot. It's still good, and there is a lot of it as there was in BL1, but there are some very questionable design decisions in the game this time around. For starters, basically all orange items (highest level of quality) can only come from various boss npc/monsters in the game now. I have never seen an orange item in a chest. This is certainly a bit confusing, as I can't discern if it's a good design decision or a bad one. On one hand it forces you to actually farm bosses which you didn't really do in BL1, and on the other hand it makes opening a chest feel like an obsolete task.
Now for the very large issues I spoke of. The loot drop mechanics are still using an ancient concept that went out of date with the release diablo 3. Don't get me wrong, I despise diablo 3, but they did create some great new mechanics. Everyone should be able to see their OWN loot, it should not be a snatch and grab fiesta where the person closest always wins. It makes playing with other people a hindrance rather than a beneficial experience and in a game that revolves around loot you just can't have a system like this and expect it to be flawless because it's not. It will force some players to decide that playing alone will be more rewarding and that should not be a choice that should be forced upon a player in a co-op game. As we all know, friends aren't always on to play a game with you, that's why matchmaking was invented. What's the point of matchmaking though in this case? I played diablo 2 for years and I always felt that was it's greatest flaw as well.
Cheaters. The rarity of items in this game is nonexistent. I've seen with my own eyes people literally spawning orange items as they stream out of their character and go flying on the ground, I've seen character saves with 500 inventory space full of rare items. I've seen people constantly using the gambling machines in the games towns and constantly only get orange items from them. Duping is also incredibly easy to do and you do not even have to be a cheater to do it, it's just a mindless exploit. Drop your item on the ground, and leave without saving, as in, close the program manually by terminating the exe. Whoever is in the game will get the item and when you log back in you will still have whatever you dropped before. Ridiculous. It just undermines the entire point of the game and this same exact exploit is still in borderlands 1. Cheating is simply out of control in BL2.
The last massive problem with this game that I want to talk about is also related to cheaters. If you join a public game and the host of that public game has cheating in some fashion by changing certain values in the games files, those changes can also be made to your own files via the way steam works. So you can potentially join a public game and then completely mess your own game up unintentionally. This is a huge flaw that was also in borderlands 1. I predicted it may have been a problem that wasn't fixed when they made BL2 so I have never joined a public game since I've played, I've only hosted public rooms. I am glad that I did, because many of my steam friends have encountered this problem. Verifying the steam game cache fixed for some, others had to completely delete files and get them back using steam game cache. Just a very massive problem, the developers should not let cheaters have this much control in their game. Due to these very large issues, specifically related to cheating being out of control I classified this game as broken. It is still very fun, as I wouldn't have put over 100 hours into if it wasn't. With these issues I duno how anybody can consciously rate it above a 7.0.
It's probably a good thing that PVP is only in the forum of accepted duels, otherwise it would be pointless due to the cheating taking place in this game. I do have to say that I was hoping there was going to be some sort of arena type combat matchmaking system in BL2 but there isn't anything like that.
Sayin' it like it is, as always, Shelledfade ~