Beautiful visuals, tight gameplay, but doesn't feel finished.
There are 4 classes: The siren, who is like a caster (necromancer I guess); the soldier, who is basically a paladin; the hunter, who is the Amazon; and "Brick," who is the Barbarian.
There are 3-tier skill trees, just like Diablo 1/2 and WoW, that fit different categories of gameplay, but unlike Blizzards games, the trees are pretty short.
The FPS aspect of the game is very tight. This is the company that made the original Counter-Strike, so they have a reputation for tight shooters. If you were one of the people who was disappointed by Fallout 3's loose, RPG-focused gameplay, then this might be the game for you.
In fact that's what it seems the developers had in mind when they made this game. "Fallout 3 didn't feel like a fast-paced shooter, so let's remake it!" For this game, though they took shortcuts and released an unfinished game.
If Blizzard or Bethesda had made this game, we would still be waiting at least another year before we were playing it. Here's why it's unfinished:
1) There are almost no NPCs. In a game that has the scope of Borderlands, one would expect towns to be full of people, yet there are very few people. In the first town you visit, Fyrestone, There is only 1 NPC. There are at least 10 houses, but only one person lives in the entire town. (Fyrestone even has a sign that says "Population: 24".) The next town you visit, there are about 6 NPCs, and all they say is "can I help you".
In fact, there are places that look like shops -- where you would expect to find NPC vendors -- Yet, there's no one there or the only person there just says "can I help you". Instead, there are vending machines... It's as if the developers said "we don't feel like paying voice actors or creating new characters, let's just fill the thing with vending machines, like Bioshock did." And it sucks.
The whole world just feels so lonely. Beautiful and lonely.
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2) The interface sucks. Click to confirm everything. I end up using a 360 controller when accessing the menu, because it takes forever and feels very awkward to use a keyboard and mouse. They obviously did not play test the PC version, and if they did, they didn't care to fix the interface.
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3) Terrible/non-existant looting system. Anybody can ninja all the loot while you're being raped by mobs. Enough said.
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4) Day turns to night and night turns to day, but the sun doesn't actually set and rise. There actually isn't even a sun in the sky. The shadows don't move. It just gets darker.
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5) Clumsy online lobby. When you search for games to join in the lobby, not only will you not be able to join any because no one opens their ports, but you won't be able to chat with people, search for certain level characters, search for certain quests, nothing useful.
When making a new online game, you won't be able to add a description, or a level cap.
When you're in the lobby for the actual game you won't be able to text chat, only voice, and no one uses voice in Borderlands.
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In my opinion, the online play isn't much more fun than offline. You don't really interact with each other as it seems no one talks back. The only difference is monsters are harder and loot is better. There's nothing really special about co-op.
What it comes down to is a game that could have been spectacular, but is only just a good game. Gearbox should have spent at least 6 more months developing this game.