As for the "pushing buttons til sex" I doubt anyone does that - unless you are doing that weird sex speed run thing. In general I'd say people pick the character they like and want a deeper story connection with. Could it be better, especially in Act 3, most definitely, but that is a general problem especially of the late game, where all the character interactions and banter seem to dry out. Some more interactions with your friends/romantic partner during the late game would be nice and I have seen tons of good suggestions for those.
I agree about the third act, it probably just hasn't been finalized in time. Hopefully they'll add content over time.
That is not how it happens in the game, based my current playthrough. It was not a large amount of approval with Shadowheart that was required for her to make a good decision. I'd not even describe it as friendship at this point, it was simply a non-antagonistic relationship. It is not realistic, because in the absence of uncovering her secret (that she is a cleric of Shar), there wasn't even a dialogue with her where she questions her faith.
For the story purposes in this game 40 approval (which is the threshold for Shadowheart to throw away the spear on her own) is when you basically become bffs with most of the companions. I suppose the threshold might be so low because it was balanced with multiplayer in mind and you are much more limited in the amount of time you can spend with each companion in your party there.
This seems very unrealistic. Approval 40 is way too low for such a big decision, considering she initially really believes in Shar and wants to become a Dark Justiciar. Perhaps then they should have made different approval thresholds for single-player and multiplayer, as well as the need for certain actions and dialogue.
IRC these are the conditions for her to save her parents:
Thank you!
I can't comment on the Astarion romance, but I've seen people here complain about the "painful sunlight" ending for him, where the PC boyfriend just stands there having a great time like the rest of the team. My point is that romances should matter a LOT even through the main storyline, not just in isolated cutscenes. At least there should be no incongruence between these two realms of interaction.
This variant of Astarion's ending is really terrible, in my opinion it's the biggest plot failure in the game (but my opinion may be subjective, and luckily there's another option for him). I completely agree with you that the romantic relationship should have much more importance. I unfortunately just didn't fully understand your point in your previous post, and I wanted to "stand up" for romances in the game, as they do bring a lot of emotions to the players, and for me the most important thing is when a game gives me the opportunity to feel something, to immerse myself in it, and BG3 really succeeded in that. Of course, if the romance lines could be improved so that they play a role in the main storyline as well, that would be just great and would really make BG3 even better.
