Freshness isn't that much of an issue if you just equip yourself accordingly, and it decays so slowly that most of the time it wont be an issue. Or at least for me it isn't, since I always try to finish missions as fast as possible if it doesnt immensely endangers my soldiers. I imagine it might become an issue during base invasion missions and whatnot, though, since rushing those is pretty much asking to get your people blown up.
Also, I haven't really checked yet since I'm only using gals still, but is freshness a gal-only thing? If so, you can still keep the old xcom playstyle by using other types of soldiers. That would be a nice option for players to have, after all, so if you want to use gals, you gotta handle freshness, and if you dont want to deal with that sort of stuff, you can use your slave soldiers and peasants and play like the xcom of yore.
That would imply that gals are higher in maintenance in comparison to human males... Which is actualy a very realistic take on it by a mod composed mostly of post apocalyptic alien/mutant porn!