That they did, cause they were actual romances; you had to be patient, converse with the love interests, hit the right spots and spend lots of significant moments with them, for the relationship to properly consolidate... i feel most recent games don't have the same charm. Rare exceptions in Wrath of the Righteous with Daeran and Arueshelae(Also Wenduag for chaotic evil characters. Arue is an attempt to recapture Fall-From-Grace, but even tho the romance is more fleshed out, i still find Grace's to land better and that last dialogue always sends shivers down my spine), cause their relationships are actually modeled similarly to the good ones of the old days and they also have failed/romance/true romance variations.
In my opinion, this is a sign of our times. "Relationships" are seldom more than superficial and are so very easy to get.
I didn't get too far into WotR since I wanted to wait until all the DLC was out, but it's good to know that there is at least one studio still making games like this.
Eh... while this is a "mileage may vary" kind of situation, I do find that Owlcat's writing and especially romances are very awkward and too verbose for their own good. Comparing Arueshalae to Grace is very generous, in my opinion, as the former, while possibly inspired by the latter, feels like she went through at least two "generic anime girl" filters first. The scenes (especially in Kingmaker) are a trope after a trope (helping your to-be-queen to fasten her armor while awkwardly blushing is painful to read...), and their tendency to blurt out huge paragprahps with little to no formatting and clear Russian roots in their composition and sentence structure also make reading them somewhat harder.
I am yet to get to Rogue Trader because it's Owlcat and it's safe to wait at least a year, better two, before their games can be played and finished without running into softlocks and bad bugs, but, while their writing is still, erm, trademark, it at least seems like the setting contributed to its quality. I cannot take Golarion seriously, but am a huge WH40k fan (at least, of its less-modern incarnations), and the few bits I've seen make me somewhat hopeful. They held back from making your Sister of Battle companion romanceable, so that's already a great sign.
