I don't think this was a mistake, in fact I think this was a good direction to go in. But it just needs more work.
The system is too overly reliant on phone calls.
Why would my neighbor ask me if I should have a baby? Isn't that a conversation you should have with your spouse?..
I think some of it is nice (calling to ask for romantic advice is cute), but some of it borders on being flat out weird.
They need to branch out and just enable story mode without asking the player's permission for every action.
Of course, this system has to have an ON and OFF switch, preferably with different levels of story mode, so people can choose what they want and not have to be forced to play a certain way.
