0.25x is a big exaggeration, but the animation is on the slow side. It's more like 70% of realistic speed. Kinda like how in regular movies, they often use a slightly slower motion in romantic sex scenes instead of the full speed that's typically in porn.
0.25 might be exaggeration but almost as much as saying they are 0.70 .
Since not all scenes have same speed realisticly its going from 0.40 to 0.60 in some rare cases.
So in best case scenario averaging around %50 of realism (romance or not)
I understand they wanted to go for the romantic scenes aproach but even in romatic TV movies you will never see a scene so slow unless its a intended slow-mo scene.
I agree everyone has their tastes or even perceptions how things should or should not be but,
The only reason im saying this is there are more than a few games out there that have a great story but the animated scenes are bad or simply dont exist, and this game would have it all if only there was a speed select button or something more natural like if they just speed up toward the end
The way they are now im pretty sure that the lewed scenes willl be the last thing most people come back to this game for.