My personal issue with Redside is less that it forces you into being the Henchman, and more that a lot of the dialogue options make your character sound like an idiot. Maybe it's just that I recently completed Hearts of Darkness so that perception got stuck, but it really, really irks me. It's a similar problem I have with Skyrim and a lot of Skyrim mods, in that they almost always expect that you're going to be playing the bashy smashy Proud Nord who is incompetent at magic, and all the dialogue is designed to reflect that, even though I usually end up playing characters who actually end up deserving the title of Archmage.
Same here. The dialogue in a lot of the missions just makes your character sound dumb, regardless of the actual concept, to the point that I can't even use my imagination to come up with something more fitting for the character most of the time, because both the contact responses and the consequent actions also make you look dumb.