Depends on what you mean by "dating mechanics." What I hate are those japanese-style dating mechanics where each "date" is just a multiple-choice test you take over and over again (or at least you had to back in the day, now there are wikis you can read to get the answers), and when you get a perfect score you get rewarded with the lewds. It's boring, it's tedious, and worst of all, it's misogynist: It reduces relationships to a lock one has to successfully pick to get access to boobies.
(How do you turn relationships and dating into game mechanics, then? In my opinion, you don't: The simple finite state machine of a video game is never going to be able to encapsulate the complexities of interacting with an actual, human person. Not unless you get to the level of a full-on conscious simulation of a person for you to talk to, and once we get to *that* end of the complexity spectrum there's a whole host of ethical issues with packaging such a conscious being and selling them as a product for you to play with. No, the best solution IMO is not to systematize at all, but to do what WAL already does and just present it as an interactive novel.)
