Yes, as I've been reading everyone's reactions here and everywhere about the story, I think I've come to a similar conclusion as I had in GI about the early arcs (and Inazuma arc in particular): the real problem isn't the underlying lore or story concepts, or even necessarily the plot points themselves, it's the "screenplay." It feels kind of like an attempt to adapt a novel to a game, but they don't quite have the time or budget to do all the scenes they really need, but also have to find a way to fit in the maps/characters/parts the teams worked to build before the screenplay was finalized. So maybe it's more like trying to adapt a novel to a game, but when they planned development they only had a rough/early draft. Then the story evolved/developed, but they didn't have the time/budget to incorporate the new/changed scenes properly, so it ends up with these sort of weird pacing issues, excessive monologues, and supposedly key scenes happening off-screen.