That son of a bitch is up there with Todd when it comes to making Bethesda shit.
Anyways, I think Broken Steel fixed a lot of the pacing now that the game was given a proper end game assault mission and post-game quests.
You're exactly right. You need to do almost nothing in Take It Back! thanks to Liberty Prime obliterating everything with eye beams and nukes, making the whole thing incredibly anti-climactic, and yet that makes his death at the start of Broken Steel that much more impactful since he was just as much the hero as you were. He died so democracy could live, so its up to us to avenge him in the name of freedom for the Wasteland.
Western Revolvers are just a straight up upgrades over the base game's .44 magnums, they basically make them obsolete unless you already have a good legendary effect on the base .44 magnum. This could have been easily avoided by making them use a rarer ammo type like the lever action's .45-70 gov(which is what I did, while also changing it's look to the Remington New Model Army)
The weapon balance is beyond terrible. Weaponsmith is arguably the closest you can get in a single mod package, and even then it still isn't consistent due to how many mods were integrated. A mall ninja Glock with so much shit slapped on even the urban demographic would look at it in horror is one of the best pistols you can get your hands on.
I'm going to piss everyone off by saying that I actually like the design of the Fallout 4 assault rifle.
HOWEVER—it looks completely out of place in Fallout. It looks more like something you'd get out of Nazi Zombies or some steampunk fps.
If it were a dedicated MG for use by power armored troops it wouldn't be out of place in the slightest since its just as bulky as they are and they would absolutely use something that has some sort of heavy-duty cooling considering the odds they're expected to face. I see no reason the BoS wouldn't rig up a water-cooled heavy rifle for their guys as some sort of expedient or just something more cost-effective than spraying everything with rounds from a minigun or energy weapon. I think it actually looks fine in that one photograph from the show where its oddly proportionate to the guy in PA despite being even bigger than it typically is.
The unique variant, Lucky, not only looks great but is a viable weapon through most of the game, if you focus on criticals and take Cowboy.
Cowboy and Grunt are the two best damn perks in the game. The lever-action shotgun benefits from Cowboy in addition to Shotgun Surgeon, and since it uses the cheaper and more common 20 gauge its quite viable. And then of course after Honest Hearts you get ALSID which is just
broken. Compared to the basic .45 it has more base damage (33 vs. 29), a 2x crit chance multiplier instead of just one, a faster fire rate (4.4 vs. 2.

, reduced AP costs (15 vs. 17), better spread (0.55 vs 0.

, more HP (250 vs. 150), and is even lighter (1.2 vs. 1.5), and all you give up for that is a single round less in the magazine, 75 Guns instead of 25 as a requirement, and the inability to mount a silencer. Its even an improved holdout weapon so you can sneak it into casinos. Unless you're specifically going for a cowboy build there's no reason not to use it.