Yeah, I haven’t run into any of those visual novel-style cutscenes yet. I honestly didn’t mind them too much in both Y7 and Lost Judgement, but only if they were used for side stories or, in Y7’s case, little inserts during battles. However, it makes absolutely no fucking sense to me why RGG would use that style to tell portions of the main story. I can’t remember if that was done in Y7, but that definitely happened in Lost Judgement. To me, it’s just lazy. If they have too much story to tell, then figure out how to be more economical with that shit.
As far as the rest of Y8’s presentation goes, the main story-related in-game (not pre-rendered) cutscenes are voiced and animated. And not that bullshit move-at-the-waist-only animation that Y7 tried to pass off as storytelling. Every game post-Judgement has been very good at this, except for Y7, and Y8 may be the best at it so far.
I do wish the side stories weren’t voiced though, and just kept as text boxes. It’s a weird thing to wish for, I know. But man, those side stories DRAG ON, which is a shame because the mini games that follow the introductory side-story rambling are fantastic. I had this issue with Y7 too, where not only do the voiced side-story scenes go on for too long, they’re barely animated. And it’s like, only the first scene and last scene of each side-story is animated and voiced. All the scenes in between are text only. I’ve found it incredibly inconsistent and just not very appealing at all. From what I remember, Y6 was pretty good at this, but I could be wrong.
Sorry for the rambling. It’s just a huge pet peeve of mine. It’s like, for ALL of the improvements the series has made to almost every other aspect of the games, I continue seeing these inconsistencies in the presentation and it’s like I’m banging my head against the wall.