I agree about the handholding, but I don't particularly count it as a mark in its favour; yes, you can take the view that 'Wow, the game lets you proceed even when you fail a mission', but the other side of that coin is that it likely doesn't particularly matter if you succeed or fail on those things.
It may just be my own cynicism, but if you fail a mission to kill a guy, my expectations are more geared toward your boss going 'Huff, sigh, now you don't get the full reward, luckily one of my other minions killed the guy and everything will continue as normal' as opposed to it opening up alternate routes and new endings and things like that. With perhaps a couple of 'Choose X option/complete this optional objective or you can't join my faction' sidequests.