Wubwub might be part of the problem. I nurse a deep hatred of wub, and whenever I'm in the middle of a fight and things start wubbing, I get annoyed. Or whenever I walk by Claptrap in Sanctuary, and he's like 'Check out my new Dubstep song!' I just want to punch him right in the eye.
I know that feel. But at least he's not whining that "there are new bounties available at the X bounty board!" every FUCKING time you'd zone, and he wasn't the only one. That really annoyed me about the previous installment, together with the ridiculous enemy respawn rate, repetitive foes and environments and NPCs being nothing but boring, soulless quest dispensers, all of which has been improved significantly in B2.
Yes, it's basically still the ol' shoot and loot, kill stuff to acquire stuff that helps you kill even more stuff, and opening lockers one by one like some passive aggressive panty sniffer, and yes you will spend a lot of time checking if certain loot you found doesn't make things x percentage more dead, but it also evolved past shooting bandits in dull environments for 12 hours. And it still doesn't take itself very seriously, or anything for that matter.
Whether or not this is enough for B2 to call itself a true sequel, rather than a very very big and well written add-on, is purely subjective. I do, however, know it was enough for me to buy the game
I'd say B2 is the game B1 should've been from the start.