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I've completed one play through as a Dalish female archer rogue with my wife and I'm about 60% of the way through my second as a human noble 2h warrior. Still having a lovely time. The choices that they force on your at and just after the Landsmeet are utterly brutal, though, especially considering the characters they involve. Spoiler: It is SO easy to lose Alister and/or Morrigan, and these are the two people you've carried with you from the beginning of the game. Even worse, unless you want to sacrifice yourself or create a potential demon baby of pure power, you lose Alister to kill the Archdemon even if you don't lose him at the Landsmeet. My wife (who had been picking the dialogue on that playthrough) was visibly upset at having to make those two decisions and we re-loaded a few times before she finally settled on a course of action. She ended up making Alister king (which made her upset, because she had meticulously romanced him and then he dumps you if you make him king), then she told Morrigan no (which made her upset, because we'd bought Morrigan about 200g worth of gear+books) and you can't convince her to stay and then, not wanting to sacrifice herself, she had Alister take the fall at the end. Pretty gnarly.
Unless there is some trick hiding somewhere that I can't see, I imagine the game's main story has a substantially less impact if your main group does not contain those two. For two characters that most players will have spent so much time with, I'm surprised you end up with such brutal options at the end. Definitely not a game with a "true" happy ending for anyone.
On my "evil" playthrough that I'm going to start up after I finish this human noble trek, I plan on bringing Zevhran, Shale, a mage (me) and probably Sten. It will be interesting to see how different things play out with that crew.
Spoiler: And, as a final side note, the Dwarf storyline is one of the most subtle and insidious things I've ever encountered in a game. When I saw the ending for picking Harrowmont, I was just stunned by how backwards and awful the "nice guy" actually was compared to how he came across. I paid closer attention on my second play through and you really need to be reading closely (including in the often-skipped codex) to pick up that Bhelen is really the guy you want on the throne, even if he's a kinslayer and all around jerkass. But a great bit of storytelling and misdirection by them in tossing that right over my head.
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