Not all the characters were bad. I just didn't like half of them. I liked Kidd, Guile, Glenn, Pip(awesome,) Fargo, Sprigg, Norris, and others. And no, I didn't like Funguy.
One thing I really liked was the level up system. If you did a lot of side quests(which you were usually unable to do until the end of the game) it made the game a little bit easy, however the game was balanced for the most part and going through never felt like it was too easy or too hard.
I'll probably pick up and play this again. It's been a very long time to be honest.