Now that I think about it some more, is it too late to remove stats altogether? I just can't think any benefit of having stats because stat-check simply prevents progress, and the only one solution is to grind the required stat. However, the way the game is designed, you can only increase stat by 1 in a day (except fitness that you can increase by 2/day), and in some cases exclusive to one another too (e.g.: if you increase massage, then you can't increase photography in the same day). So what happens is a lot of repetitive grind where nothing happened because you're blocked on your progress. I don't think that's a good design at all.
If it's too late to remove stats, could you either lower the stat requirement into much lower (2-3 points instead of 10) or increase the stat gain by a lot (increase by 5 points per training instead of 1).
The problem with the current stat-check system is not necessarily just because of the actual stat requirement itself, but it's added by the slow stat increase, and the amount of different stats to increase. So we don't just need 10 points in massage, but also in photography, cryptography, diving, billiard, dart, etc. All of those are on top of the NPC relationship stats, as well as money. That is A LOT of stat-check bloating the game without actual meaningful content because grinding stat is just repeating the same thing over and over and over again everyday. That is not fun.