I don't think adding the anxiety of potential fail states to normal puzzle solving and conversation trees is how I'd want to play this game.
I get the feeling a lot of people don't and DONTNOD respects that, but I have to say if it isn't the right thing thing to do for the sake of the story.
For the most part, the time travel mechanic isn't really a puzzle at all. You are, in practice, brute forcing dialogues so you get the exact result you want. This game isn't about puzzles per se; it's actually you imposing your omniscient will on reality like you would a Bioware game using "save scumming".
And this is fine for the first two episodes because they were about Max coming to terms with her newfound power to change the world. Her tampering of time is also your tampering her time. Her experiments are your experiments, her discovery also yours. However, Episode 3 showed that her ability isn't perfect or omnipotent. Afterwards, she was no longer willing to toy with time to the same extent as she used to and the story reflected that.
But the mechanics didn't; the story and the mechanics diverged instead. I am a big proponent of storytelling through mechanics and all I can see is wasted potential here. They elected to separate the "game" from the "story" when they could've easily done both and achieved far greater heights than before. I'm sure it would've carried a real cost with their playerbase, but I don't know. I feel like it would've been worth it.
I like to think that in time, people would've come to appreciate how a game is able to convey negative emotions like anxiety and reluctance more viscerally than any other medium; to make the player experience the characters' own state of mind in a way that's impossible in other passive storytelling forms.