definitely a good game, actually worth paying for
in terms of hours played i think it's actually longer than me1 by a decent amount, just feels shorter since 3/4s of your time is spent on recruiting your team / doing their side quests instead of plot vital quests. i like the side quests and the characters a lot, def better than in me1 but at the same time i wish there was more time focused on the central plot.
in me1 the focus was on saren and the reapers almost the whole time, and he was a much more fleshed-out badguy than harbinger was with encounters with him at the beginning, middle and end of the game. all we really saw of harbringer was the glowy eyed collector in a control room and him commanding his troops to capture shepherd while on the battlefield. he's basically a pawn of the reapers so it's kind of hard to really get emotionally invested in defeating him
martin sheen would have been a more compelling enemy to fight in the end since you get to know him and his motivation much better throughout the game.