yeah, I definitely don't have the pull with this one that I had with the others (even TPS, which I actually liked because some of the characters were pretty great). I think the way the maps and quests are set-up, the missions just aren't that fun (I was actually feeling a bit tired of everything before my first playthrough...it just started getting tedious and over-long).
But the skill trees are indeed more interesting than I thought--both Flakk and Amara have some very serious builds, and not just one each like ...pretty much every other borderlands game. I thought the multiple action skills would just either be samey or leave you with the "clearly one is superior. the rest are garbage," ...but it isn't working out that way. matching them up with their proper infusion skills, whatever those are called, and really more useful overall trees in each class so far. ...I am interested in the next level cap though, and whatever else they might do with skills. On top of the increased levels, there should be a couple more skills tacked on and some adjusted by one of the earlier DLCs, if the early dev notes are to be believed.
Amara has a really strong suspend-chain-crit hit the map sort of spammy build right now, that is just bizarre. It looks weird, but checks out when you play it. But like a lot of them, there is some important gearing--specific legendary class mod--that is really hard to farm right now, because of the random loot tables...which is also soon to be patched into boss and mob specific, which will be a bonus. She's got a pretty good Samsara build..sorta, but also a heavy elemental build that takes advantage of one of those Maliwan pistols, to shoot yourself on fire for like, 10s (weak low level pistol), and gives you near 200% damage to that element--but this is also a specific relic, I think, that is required. again legendary, and again a bit too rando...but there are similar variations on that that are still really great, at least for Mayhem 2. ..I haven't played much on Mayhem 3 with my weak version of that (without the self-harm pistol fire spam; but there is another really strong option that focuses on ricochet shotguns or something) but it's still quite OK.
That Flakk leave-no-trace crit thing though, it just wrecks, lol.