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.
I used to say exactly the same thing about Anders until I replayed Awakening earlier in the year and found I didn't like him nearly as much as I remembered. Maybe it's because that depiction of him in DA2 had contaminated his character forever, but it felt more a case of "yeah, now I know what you're about". I now feel that they didn't change his personality, they just expanded on what was already there.
I liked most of the other characters in DA2; perhaps Merrill more than most in that I understood that general vibe of being good at something but lacking the common sense and general life experience to know whether or not it's worth pursuing and alienating everyone in the process. ahem. The one who irritated me the most was Isabela who seemed to be both pointlessly and implausibly flaky.
