Even putting aside the blatant awfulness of the level design, visual design, combat structure design and so on, the story of DA2 is still awful in itself. The narrative-gameplay integration is non-existent. Every character is an unsympathetic cardboard cut-outs. Companions are blatantly designed for the sake of shippers and fetishists. But most importantly: Nothing you do in the game matters. Not only is the game 100% on rails, you're not even the conductor. Your character drives not a single moment of the plot. Nothing important happens because you choose to do something. You're only ever responding two what the real players of the story do.
The game is a clear example of the computer-game-rpg equivalent of a GM who wants to write a book rather than play an rpg. The writers of DA2 wanted to tell a story and the player is a barely tolerated nuisance that they chose to write around rather than include in that story. They should have just made a straight-forward linear action game with one of their real protagonists as the main character rather than pretend that the player character has a place in story.
I was pleasantly surprised with DA2 (as in: it was way better than I was told it is), but yeah, it does have a lot of problems. I actually didn't hate the story - I'm not much of a fan of "plight of the common man" stories, but it was a nice break from saving the world. Templars vs mages was way overdone over the course of the series, but that's more of Inquisition's problem (that it did the same story again). But yeah, now that I think about it, there was little in terms of player/character agency in DA2.
As for characters... I have to agree, with the exception of Varric. Varric is possibly my favourite character from the series. I won't forgive DA2 for what it did to Anders though. I liked him in Awakening and then... yeah. Aveline was ok if bland and Merrill was tolerable if stupid.
