I don't think Baldur's Gate 3 is overly sexualized, I think it's just more sexualized than the average game of its type. I think Phoenix's points are pretty much my opinions on the matter as well. However I also agree that the game doesn't really do anything special with romances, nor are the sex scenes all that interesting. Personally I don't think the scenes are really good enough to justify their inclusion overall, but I'm not upset they're in there. I also agree that I think the capacity for deep friendhsips with the companions is lacking. Part of that is because of the way character relationships are written, that's true. Romances are treated as the gateway to seeing the deepest parts of many companions. However I don't think that's the only reason or perahps even the main reason. I think an equal or greater cause of that lack of deep friendship is because our character never really gets to be more than an empty husk of surface level traits dictated by class and race. We're not able to really express our attachment fully through our characters even during romance.
As for tying character relationships to mechanics, I'm of two minds on that. I think it could be cool, but I feel like tying it specifically to romance only encourages the divide in bonding between romance and friendship. I also don't think roleplay needs to be tied to mechanics to be deep and meaningful, and indeed tying things to mechanics can have the opposite effect, where suddenly character relationships aren't about bonds with the characters, they're about which character has the best relationship bonus.
