Oh I am very aware that it is a rare opinion.Interesting....
After the initial TF2 hate by primarily xbox fanboys, the love for the game has been everywhere and it's so incredibly awesome. TF2 has relatively bad level design and story in my opinion and I'd argue most fans loved it for many other reasons . BT was an awesome companion, worldbuilding teased a lot of cool things, cool gameplay, cool sets, etc. I prefered TF1 because it was a leaner experience that had most of the positives but a lot less of the padding.
Padding though? I thought its a well paced game, its only about 6 hours to complete! Perhaps it could have been made of more shorter levels but I think it worked really well the way it is.