I got the game a day earlier (Amazon the GOAT) and started the story. To be honest, the "slideshow" cutscenes don't bother me
that much but maybe that's because I already read this part in the manga so... it comes across as just the manga in color? (With some odd frames every now and then).
That said, I'm not sure what CC2 could have done because even if these were in-game cutscenes 80% of what takes place after the Prologue is
literally "in the past" stuff or flashbacks. And many of those moments are conversational and/or "transition"-based where the scene changes from one to the next (like one moment, for instance, Kakashi & co. are planning and then they reach the end of their planning conversation) or another example of it would be going from that scene to them running in a forest for a very
brief period.
How the heck do you make that an interesting in-game cutscene, let alone worth the time and effort or resources? In the past games those moments (at least the running in the forest) would be the "free roam" parts but with that removed from this how do they make a scene like that (
) remotely interesting or worth the time/effort/resources put in to make it an in-game cutscene?
Like, I get why you would want to have everything animated in-game because the game is beautiful and you know CC2 can do it but a lot of it, at least in the beginning of either Naruto's or Sasuke's paths, is frontloaded with "flashbacks". "Flashbacks" that in the manga/anime go on
far longer than they do in this game (seriously good job CC2 on, so far, condensing that shit lmao).
But then I guess it stems from the cocktease at the beginning of Sasuke's path where it literally is an in-game cutscene but then once it fades to black it starts the "slideshows". CC2 could have easily continued from the in-game cutscene but it's clear from the moment it fades to black to do the "slideshow" that they cut corners with this game's story mode. Even if you try to argue what I'm saying, it's clear that they cut corners here.
That being said, if they continued on Storm 3's path (minus the "free roam" stuff) I still think this story would have been dragged on and on. I haven't played much of the story yet (only halfway through each path so about an hour and a half to two hours in) but that's the feeling I have -- that the "slideshows" aren't that bad and it moves the story along quicker because you're spending less time spamming the A button and watching the camera pan around and characters talking relatively either not very emotive (with their faces) or the conversation itself is no longer interesting because you read it in the manga.
But that's just me. Everyone's different and may enjoy seeing/hearing something again in CC2's engine and stuff.