Still playing Bioshock Infinite. Setting, story, art style etc all are almost very good but I don't like the combat and that shitty overdone looting system. The gameplay is a copy+paste of Bioshock 1 with some flaws and many simplifications. There is no real penalty for dying, Vending Machines are useless, weapons are under-balanced and there is no need of pistol, bow etc any longer, that funny hacking minigame is also removed. It's like playing a repetitive Run & Gun shooter.
I actually agree with a lot of those criticisms, but I think Infinite is better than the sum of its parts.
I was really disappointed with how simple the loot system is, and the fact that it hasn't improved at all since the original Bioshock is perplexing to me.
Completely agree about no penalty for dying. As I stated before, the resurrection system felt cheap to me. I hope they include an option to disable that in a patch like they did in Bioshock.
I wouldn't say vending machines are useless especially if you're playing on Hard, but I do think there's too many of them, and their presence in the game world doesn't make much sense.
I never used the original pistol again after finding better weapons, but that's the only weapon that seemed under-powered to me. Not sure why you mention bows since there are none in the game unlesss I missed something.