There was a time romances in games were a nice gimmick. Now seeing the amount of resources they take for such a minimal amount of content per playthrough... I'm really starting to resent them.
Back to the question of the topic: Preferably none for my 'real' playthrough, maybe Karlach if she is well written. If I do multiple playthroughs I might just engage in romances to see how Larian handled them.
I wouldent call Yen, Triss, and many others "minimal content"
Yen and Triss were completely differently handled - its not like you have multiple genders and sexuality to consider when doing Witcher - it was easier and focused there. Comparing that to what Larian has to do is not fair to Larian. They have so much more technical challenges and just the amount of combinations to go through. The Witcher series was something very different than 'traditional' RPGs due to the existing characters. I love it for what it is, but it shouldn't be compared to games like BG3 - they have nothing in common beyond superficial concepts.
I would say Cyberpunk and some of the examples (like DAO, KotoR) you listed are part of the old approach to it. You had a very limited amount of options - doesn't make everybody happy, but it didn't take a huge amount of resources from the production. Keep in mind those intimate scenes to be done well take a hell lot more effort than a regular scene (and thanks to uncanny valley they still often look worse than regular scenes). But Bioware with their fan-service and constantly expanding amount of romances have set a standard that to me didn't improve games. Representation - cool. Several dozen sex scenes to have all combinations covered - pointless, just fade to black, trust your players' imagination and don't waste time on scene that look like low budget hentai.
And honestly I'm really annoyed about all NPCs in a game constantly hitting on my character.
I dont thing so? If you make every character player sexual nothing really goes to waste.
Also I don't think you can really claim modern games are wasting money on romances when you seemingly have no issues with older games doing them. DA:O had about the same composition, everyone but 3 romancable with Morrigan and Allister having significant romance story involvement.
People like sex, they like romance. And so what if it's hentai?
Even Elden Ring had romance.
If anything later Bioware titles haven't had enough Romances.
I can say with complete sincerity that part if the reason Andromeda failed is that there want enough romance diversity, or maybe it's just that the romances were bad, but no one was thirsting over Liam or Cora or anyone else really.
