I find the romances very bad in this game. To the point that after a firts playthrough i never boder with them again.
Before point up why I think it's bad, let me say one thing. I hate the date sims romances in rpgs. It hurts the narrative as bad as any bad scrip. When you take any fiction, being a film, a book... Romance is there as part of the tale, not as a unrelated spin off. I really would like a game that set up a romance tied to the history and go with it.
That said, some games play this date sims better than others. Bioware games (DA, ME) that are very similar to this one in that part, do a decent job given the limited tools that a dating sims can have from a narrative perspective. In BD3 romances are totally like an alternative minigame without any meaning.
I think there's several reasons for that:
-Play a doll as main character. That is something that hurts the game narrative in general every time we have any emotional scene, with of course means all romances in particaular. Our PC is emotionless and mute, facial and body expressions are like 10% quantity and quality of the other characters (that are extremely good). In top of that they are muted so not even a good voice acting can save this lack of emotions (wich happens for example in cyberpunk, where they take the stupid aproach on make firts person even in cutscenes, but at least have a good voice acting)
-Romances don't have any interactions. They are a game apart from the game. No mission or event for a character change if you are in romance or not. One can think that many personal quest and event shuold take if your romance partnert is involved, but they not. Not to mention the end, wich doesn't give a shit about it (but that one is almost normal, as the end doesn't feature content at all for anything)
-Romance partnerts never rocognizes your character. They doesn't have a defined sexuality and like everything. Note that i don't enter in characters being gay, hetero, bi or have a crush for pretty stones, I don't care at all. But they should be conscious about their tastes and yours and comment aboiut it. Again the "doll PC", they don't care or noticing if your character is male, female, elf or dwarf. The game threads you all the same.
These are the main factors in my opinion. Firts one is a bad desing decision that affect the whole game. The others two make me think that romances are simple unfinished and never should have been in the game in the firts place
