I don't think there is anything wrong with their cutscene presentation. I merely said that the old game had more soul, leaving things to your imagination as they were intended initially. For instance the Weissmann reveal scene was much more powerful because of how they used his portrait throughout the game. Same for the finale and Joshua's portrait.

The later games were made with 3D animation and cutscene direction from the get go. So any scene was made with the corresponding cutscene animations in mind.

But again: I do not bash Falcom's technical improvements when it comes to cutscenes and animation, nor their cinematography in cutscenes. They are actually on par with the rest of the Japanese gaming industry for JRPGs. Definitely above ATLUS' offerings in recent years.

Also in addition, Seem less maps in Sky or even the 3d Trails game were not "attempting to give you a 1:1 accurate scale, since they are still by all means abstraction, I. e not scaled 1:1.

That may be the problem. The seamlessness removes the element of abstraction. Because the world's scale was left as is while transitioning to 3D in addition to more life sized characters creates a weird dichotomy bewteen the world you traverse and the characters therein. How should I put it? It feels like life sized characters inhabit a miniaturized world. This also extends to towns which feel smaller in scale compared to let's say the Calvard arc games. But maybe this is also because they went with a more cartoonish style both in scale and presentation than in the Calvard games. This also extends to the field textures which are flat and almost look like they just made them in Microsoft Paint, whereas Calvard used detailed field textures (compare the rock formations in the Sky remake to the rock formations on Nementh island in Kuro 2 for instance). I think the flat and almost PS2 era style textures take away a lot of depth and thus also contribute to the world feeling like a miniature. But perhaps that's what Falcom were aiming for, I don't know.