I gotta say, Ryder is a nice contrast to Shepard....

I admit I was worried about having such a young protagonist but I've been pleasantly surprised. I have female Ryder and her VA is amazing, she puts just enough emotion into the lines without ever being over the top, and there haven't yet been any flat lines of dialogue either.

I'm also enjoying being uncertain and new at being in charge, it's very well written. I'm playing her as a badass who loves adventure and mostly using the casual and professional lines, with the odd logical and emotional one thrown in. There have been the typical BioWare moments where I've clicked a response that reads as being blunt or cruel, and worried about what they'd say, however the dialogue that happens is great and I honestly haven't wanted to replay that many moments. I replay dialogue in Inquisition ALL THE DAMN TIME as it's often not what I intended to say, however ME:A is spot on almost every time.

Not having the super hard badass who's over confident....well...I love Shepard but I've gotta say it's been awesome so far and a nice contrast. Plus that's who Ryder is, she's young, suddenly thrown into a role that's too big for her, and no one thought she'd get the job so they're all worried about it. It would be odd if she was super arrogant or over confident, odd if she walked around like she owned the place or was downright cruel to the aliens. All of that was appropriate and a lot of fun in ME1 but it's not what this character or story is about, and if they made her mean or evil it would just be for the sake of it and not for the benefit of the story.

Kudos to BioWare on their creation of Ryder, from me anyway. I'm the one over here in the background giving you guys a thumbs up whilst the rest of the crowd run at you with torches and pitchforks.

Couldn't agree more with this.
Yeah, if people can enjoy Ryder, that's great. I do too, but there's literally only one way to play them. I love RPing, but it will never be possible with Ryder because they're so one-sided. Professional Ryder clashes with autodialogue and the humour that's shoved in it, so I guess a funny/sassy Ryder is the only way it would feel natural with the tone of the game.
Shepard's backstories alone are more varied and it has a lot more replay value in terms of that and because of how different Shepard can feel.

If they continue into a MEA trilogy with Ryder, I seriously hope there's more dialogue tones next time. 4 times "nice" just doesn't cut it in a Bioware game. It's terrible.

Ryder is fast growing on me too. He's certainly more relatable than Shepard, and I'm pretty sure it was by design; after how larger than life Shepard ended up being, trying to equal or outdo him would probably have led into something a bit ridiculous. So Bioware dialed it down into a more human protagonist.

My only pet peeve is that we don't have enough opportunities to be a jerk. It's not a big problem since I usually don't play a jerk, but still.