I honestly don't care enough about DA2 enough anymore to get worked up about the game anymore, so I suppose I might be being a little blase here, lemme try explain a bit more.
Isabella makes it very clear in DA:O that she's a "duelist" and that the best way to survive as a duelist is to avoid fights as much as possible. If you challenge her to a fight she pretty much calls you an idiot.
So along comes DA2 and oh... She wants to join a party of adventurers and risk her life for all kinds of things she couldn't care less about. Yes, she had someone after her and all the usual sterotypical nonsense, but she makes zero effort to do anything but fight her way through and even when her problems are resolved she returns to being a frontline fighter without a thought.
It just makes me wonder, why even bring her back? Why not create a new character?
Doesn't help that she's (for me at least) in the running for the worst companion I've ever had to suffer through. I have no idea how her writing went, it's clear they were going for some kind of "free spirit" archetype, but then decided that the only way to show that was to show she was sexually liberated. Literally her entire identity is around sex, everything she talks about is sex, every conversation with her angles back towards sex, she'll happily cheat if in a relationship and she spends the majority of the game whoring herself around.
Honestly, it was bafflingly terrible at the time but even looking back years later all I can remember about her is
1) Obviously stole from the Qun'ari but Hawke refuses to ever, ever, ask her about it despite this being fucking obvious and I'm trying to get the Qun'ari leader on my side. Hawke are you dumb or just loyal? What the fuck is wrong with you?
2) Obsessed with sex.
That's it, that's her entire character. I know she had some kind of big dark past, I don't remember what it was, only that it revolved around sex. She's the most shamelessly one note character I've ever seen.
I don't remember Merril's path enough except remembering the whole thing seemed retarded. She ends up spending ~10+ years infront of a mirror apparently? The time skips seriously made zero sense.
Anders was less a stuy in demonic posession (wasn't Justice not a Demon? I don't remember) and more a study in how to ruin a great character in 10 easy (and Edgy!) steps.
Hawke was a normal dude, okay, but when everything's falling around and Meribeth is taking control of the city despite no-one wanting this, he's not just a normal dude. He's the champion... And he does nothing. Literally nothing. Just shrugs his shoulders and lets things go to hell. No attempt to mediate, no attempt to help, just retreats to his mansion and sits quietly for TEN FUCKING YEARS. He certainly doesn't do any love interest stuff, which is hillariously clear if you romance Isabella since you fall for her, make some moves, then she goes off and you don't see her for years while she's sleeping around.
The whole game was building up to the templars and mages nonsense, sure, but only as a background thing. Honestly the Qun'ari part was far better done and would have made a fine ending, leaving the templars mages stuff to boil over in the background.
Instead we spend the whole game going through this "Mages aren't evil, the Templars are overly harsh. Mages are dangerous but the people who resort to Blood Magic are the few. Letting them be imprisoned, enslaved, raped and tortured is terrible." stuff for most of the game.
Then, oops.
Nope, it turns out every single mage is evil and every single mage turns to Blood Magic with the smallest provocation. Including/Especially the fucking leader of the mages, who's apparently spent as much time asking for more freedom as he has conducing sinister and pointless Blood Magic experiments.
Oh and Meribeth was crazy because of this random idol we found. Cool.
Stupid shit.