Bravo. You summed up perfectly. This game lacks a lot of cool DnD mechanics yet the developers seemed to be so eager to serve some kind of totally unnecessary mechanics they call romance! At least, they could have made it optional. As you said perfectly not every player should spend some of their play time trying to dodge the contrived romantic sub-plots.
I mean we are talking about a cRPG without day/night cycle, with free camera scouting which renders DnD scouting mechanics, with wherever and whenever you wish long rest which renders so many mechanics in terms of magic economy and party setups, etc. etc... Yet, what we are served is some so called romance dialog options with unlikeable characters.
Well, that's catering to mass market tastes for ya... is it really so unexpected, though? You played Larian games before, haven't you?
