It often gets worse. I stopped playing Final Fantasy X (on the PS2) because there was a boss battle where there was a 10 minute un-skippable cutscene between each stage of the battle and if you died you had to re-watch each one.
Last couple plays I’ve used zig-zag approach when traveling through random encounter zones, effectively ~doubling distance traveled, and encounters. Stretches those out, but removes most of the separate, dedicated grinding.
(Not defending the game design that makes this necessary, mind you)
Generally. I don't like playable dream sequences or artistic filler sequences in games. I feel like there are a lot of people that working in gaming that couldn't get into Movies/TV and as a result try to insert that sort of story telling into a form of entertainment where it doesn't belong.
The best in game story telling IMO was the Doom 2016 game, where the physicality of the character was done through the short sequences where control was briefly taken away. Unfortunately they undid this (mostly) in subsequent sequels .
These days I want my games to be actual games.
Half of Final Fantasy X (and I think a little later they released a movie both for Final Fantasy VII and the standalone movie the Spirit Within) was Square showing off how good their CGI animation was, which at the time was very good.
CGI cut scenes went from "this is a cool thing I see between levels" on the PS1 to "this is a tedious interruption".