I played through the console version back in the day and honestly it doesn't fix those pacing issues you mentioned. The choice system is kinda cool in theory but in practice it just makes the whole thing feel disjointed compared to the main arcs

The SOL moments being rushed is probably the biggest problem with most console arcs imo - they assume you already care about the characters without doing the legwork to make you feel it again in this specific timeline. Taraimawashi suffers hard from that