I want to do a quick storyline rundown and offer my opinions.

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility: Both Peter and Hiro learned the hard way just how hard it is to do the right thing. Peter's naivete nearly let Adam destroy the world. Hiro's heart got in the way of his head and helped create one of the most dangerous men we've ever seen in Heroes. Both lost loved ones because of it. Even though the stories got off to a slow start, they really paid off in the end.

Missed Opportunities: There was so much that could have been done with Nathan and Matt. Nathan once again spiraled into selfishness, this time with the help of a bottle. He snapped out of it and rose again to become a true hero. He was finally ready to admit what he was, and then was snuffed out. Matt started on the path to becoming evil, but then he just became a secondary character. The writers really should have done more with them and less with others. At least with Matt we still have time.

The Nature of Evil: Wow, we really dug into this one. We had diabolical Adam, Maury, and Sylar on one hand, and the "ends justify the means" attitude of HRG and the Company on the other. It's nice to see some more moral grey.

Wasted Time: Two storylines that we could have done without would be Niki and Maia. So much time was spent on them, but there was really no payoff. That wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't neglected other more interesting characters in the mean time.

So Volume 2 has closed, with a nice setup for Volume 3. With most of our heroes now aware of the Company and its grip on their lives, I see a major confrontation coming in the future. Hopefully the writers have been paying attention and realized what they did wrong in Volume 2. We don't need new characters with long setups. We don't want our established characters getting short changed. Give us our driving story and character development, and do it right off the bat.

Moral Grey: well done.
Character development: Spotty. Could have given a bit more to Adam's god complex, a touch more for matt. Mohinder might have been overdone.
Focus: Poor to start, then good to finish. No more than 4 storylines an episode please! We get shortchanged otherwise. In fact, having 4 storylines, split two an episode would really work, allowing you to build more momentum than having 7 storylines, each getting 20 minutes spread over 3 episodes.
New Characters: We have enough. Bring in new ones like Elle: relate them to the other characters so we have an immediate stake in them. Maya was a cab ride for Sylar.

For Volume 3:

Let Nathan survive. Adrian Pasdar and Greg Grunberg were magic together. They should team up, Nathan back into politics and Matt as his right hand man.

Give Maya an interesting storyline connected to Mohinder, no more close-ups of her crying. Give her attitude and let her seek revenge on Sylar.

Give Elle more screentime and make her HRG's partner within the Company. Let HRG lead her on the right track and give them a father-daughter relationship.

Give Claire less screentime, but don't put her back in high school. High school movie doesn't work with Heroes. Let her confront Sylar. Make her grow out of her teens.

Don't depower Peter. Even if his strength is a plot problem, make a volume with his strength as a big part of it. Let him befriend Hiro, they were a great team in Five Years Gone.

Let Niki be dead permanently. Let Micah stay with Monica and play a big part of her transforming into St. Joan. Let Micah use his powers more often.

Give Hiro more attitude. Make him darker, but still a good guy. He doesn't need the comic relief anymore, Nathan and Matt can take that spot (the landing scene in episode 2x11 for example).

Let Sylar kill.

My main problem with this season was the pacing; I know it's been said a lot, but the first seven episodes moved far too slow, particually in regards to the Maya and Hiro plotlines. Maya & Alejandro spent most the season travelling with not very much happening on the way, save for them picking up Sylar... Maya's power seemed shocking and devastating the first two or three times we saw it, but when it happened every single episode, it started to lose any of the tension, and it just became predictable. Hiro's plotline ought to have been fantastic; the teaser for Volume Two at the end of How to Stop an Exploding Man was very exciting and full of potential. However, despite a great first two episodes with Hiro in the past, his storyline with Adam and Yaeko fast became boring... Most of the Kensei trials happened off-screen, and the love story never really worked, leaving us with very little. The entire 1671 plot could have been told in three episodes without chopping out anything important; by dragging it out over seven episodes, the Hiro scenes became dull and devoid of the Heroes "feel".

Character development also hit an all-time low this season. Whether it be Bennet, or Peter, or Mohinder, nearly every character suffered from radical personality shifts this time round, with some scenes leaving you scratching your head, wondering exactly why Character X did something. The new characters were treated pretty poorly, too; Maya and Alejandro had a lot of potential, but their slow and frankly boring storyline made me lose my enthusiasm for them. Monica was a good character with a good ability, but even now, I can't see what relation she had to the greater picture. The only truely great new characters were Elle and, especially, Bob, who I felt deserved to be a season regular. As much as I loved Sylar in Season One, he shouldn't have been brought back; he came across as more of the same, except less well-done. Ando, meanwhile, was perhaps my biggest dissapointment; he was one of my favourite characters in Season One, and yet here he did almost nothing. He was constantly being left behind by Hiro, and really, his only shining moment of the series were his moments with Kaito in Four Months Later....

Despite this, there were a lot of good points. There were some interesting new abilities introduced, although we didn't get to see enough of Monica's power and its potential uses. The character of Adam is a good one, and having him introduced to us as Takezo Kensei was an interesting idea - his fate in Powerless is both harrowing and amusing. I was also pleased to see the Shanti virus becoming a focal point of the season, and the potential future we saw in this episode was even more disturbing than the one in Five Years Gone - if only it had been introduced sooner, then the suspense may have been higher, as it was throughout Season One. The Company actually feels like a central element of the show now, as opposed to a mysterious threat in the background, and I can't wait to see more from them.

Sadly though, I personally consider Season Two to be a bit of a letdown, particually after Season One, which seemed so brilliantly crafted and designed. The teaser for Volume Three didn't do much for me, to be honest, but as long as Sylar isn't just doing the same things as in Season One then I reckon it has the potential to be much, much better.

Jop, please give us character development instead of personality shifts. Seems to me more than one character had mental problems/personality disorder this season.

Give Heroes back the class it deserves. Go back to the roots without doing anything too radical.
Let some guys be good guys and some guys be bad guys and let them stick to it. Some shady characters are great, but do not make them all that way.

Do not do what you wanted to avoid from the start: Do not create tension with mysteries which lead to a cheap conclusion and do not make another mystery the solution. Do not go the "Lost" way. The first seasons of Alias are a better example. (Not that I want another Alias)

Let there be genuine payoffs and no foreshadowing of great twists to come that lead to nothing.
Throw us off from time to time, but not all the time! It's like eating too muich sugar.
Construe a tight, dense plot.

Nathan/Peter/Matt/Hiro: They should change their minds about going public with their abilities.
But, they should start a new "anti-Company" organization for their generation, with the goal of finding and saving mutants from The Company. The two competing organizations would be in a race to find new mutants, and Sylar would also be in the race looking for new victims. Let Nathan live and resume his political career in Congress, where he secretly uses his political power to undermine The Company. Let Peter and Hiro go on time-traveling missions.

Claire: She should secretly be working to undermine The Company.

Sylar: He should resume his quest for new victims. He should kill Adam and take his power. We need more of that creepy brain surgery, complete with spine-tinging screams.

I think that Season 1 wasn't that great in the beginning either. It was drawn out, and there was an episode that went absolutly nowhere. That being said: It's only when you compare it to Volume 2 that the 1st season was "the best".

Truly Volume 2 was a downer. Now that it's over I can say that. Before this: I waited for Monday ~ Heroes night. This year was more difficult for me because I didn't have a TV (anymore) until the finale, and had to watch the epiodes on-line.

At the start of the season I was excited, and would go on-line very early Tuesday morning to see everything on-line, but as it dragged on, and on --- I started to forget. At times I wouldn't watch the episodes until Thursday or Friday. That's bad! Really bad...

Generations: 4 out of 10. (0 being the worst!)