I've only replayed this once or twice from the beginning, and this was absolutely the worst thing about my replay experience. Just one event after another, I couldn't do what I wanted until I completed a bunch, then nothing again. I mean, it's not the worst thing, but I at least want to choose when I can do each event, when I'm ready to do it.
I don't know if that's still the case, as I haven't played a new game since like version 10 or 11 (maybe 12? I don't remember), so it might have been smoothed out by now. Or maybe I just played it "wrong" and that bottleneck of events was my fault.