Cutscenes leave me out as a player, relegating me to a spectating role. I feel that having some agency over the proceedings in a game is fundamentally preferable to not having any.

My favorite game for the world and characters is Fallout New Vegas. You know how many cutscenes you have to watch in that game? Just the intro, optionally the DLC intros, and the ending. I can't think of any other instance where you're forced to sit there and not control your character, even if it's just dialogue options. Even then, you usually have a "you know what, screw this, I'll shoot you in the face instead" option. You don't need to wrest control from the player to have a well-written, immersive world with memorable characters in it.

The game goes from being immersive to being cinematic or in other words: it goes from you BEING the character to you WATCHING a movie about a character. A game is about interaction and cutscenes usually don't have that.

I don't blanket dislike cutscenes, but their proper implementation is an important design decision.

Your reasoning "it takes effort to make a cutscene, and shows the devotion of the developer, so therefore cutscenes are good" doesn't really follow logically. Effort and time can be expended on something that it shouldn't have. If someone was meant to go down the street to buy some milk, but instead ended up walking to China, that doesn't mean they did a good or praiseworthy thing, they wasted time and effort needlessly.

I dislike badly done cutscenes when I notice them wresting control away from me and break the flow that the game was creating.
I dislike badly done cutscenes when instead of making me invested in the story, they make me realise that I've been watching a cutscene, and it has been going on for a while now.
I dislike badly done cutscenes when developers rely on them for exposition, or progressing the story, when a skilled developer could have much better designed the game so as to reveal the story organically while I was playing it.

I specifically dislike cutscenes right after heavy segments because, when the segment has just passed, the next thing I want to do is save the game, and the cutscene prevents me from doing so. As a result, I get unnecessarily anxious, and as a result I can't enjoy the cutscene even if I would have been able to anyways. (Grandia Xtreme is an example of a game that does poorly here.)

There's also the fact that I can't get invested in a game's story before I've become invested in the gameplay. (Coincidentally, Grandia Xtreme is another offender here, though it's far from the only one.)

The first point i agree on. That's why i like the save system from Dark Souls or the Tomb Raider reboots. Nearly every important piece of progress is saved. You don't have to worry about losing progress, because the game does that for you... Unless it bugs out which happened to me in Shadow of the Tomb Raider when one optional tomb got completely broken for me.

I also like the save system from Witcher 3. On PC, you can have as many saves as you like, so if you get into the habit of pressing f5 from time to time, and sometimes making manual saves, you don't risk losing all that much progress. It's ridiculous there are still games like Gta V which have limited save slots

Or if the game saves something you don't want to be saved.

I know that a lot of work goes into them but I find cut-scenes to be lazy game development. I play games to play. The moment you stop my game to tell me a story, I consider refunding right there and then.

If you have a game with lore find other means to distribute that lore that does not stop game play. Games like many rouge-like do that with text or even complete books in games but I don't have to read it to progress. I have no problem with checking that stuff out when I'm in the mood but not during my game playing time.

MK11 is a great example of good lore but bad execution that was covered in a youtube video about the % of players that completed story mode.

It would have been sweeter, IMO if the story mode was something one could watch in the extras section or as a downloaded movie for ppl that bought the game.

Even the Ocean does something interesting; When you start the game, you get to choose between Full Game Mode, Story Mode (which basically skips the action gameplay), Gauntlet Mode (which skips the story), and Warp Mode. There's also a lot of speedrun and accessibility options.
Or if the game offers Story and Gauntlet modes like Even the Ocean. Play Gauntlet when you're looking for the game play, and if you really just feel like watching the story, play Story.

You seem to be using cutscene to mean FMV here. JRPGs were known for having lengthy cutscenes done using the in game engine long before FMVs became dominant.

Even back then, I didn't like the cutscenes.

I didn't find FF6 to be truly enjoyable until after you get the second airship, at which point the game becomes non-linear and the cutscenes basically stop.

My most recent play of Final Fantasy 5 (which I haven't completed) is with a mod (called Project Demi) that actually removes the cutscenes. FF5 does have a few bad cutscenes, but they're not as frequent as in later FF games. (The worst parts are the end of the first world (7 minute cutscene, but fortunately not connected to a boss fight, and you're back on the world map right afterwords) and the beginning of the 3rd, though the 2nd world has one associated with a boss (though at least the boss comes *first*; on the other hand, there's the remote possibility of a forgetful player softlocking during a scripted fight with the wrong set-up).)

Final Fantasy 1-3 don't have much in the way of cutscenes at all, and neither do Dragon Quest 1-4; there's a reason I often like playing those games.

I don't mind a short cutscene to introduce a place or whatever, but in general video games excel when they embrace their interactive qualities. Stories excel when they focus on the unique aspects of the medium, like interactive dialog and the player changing the world through his or her actions. If the game is too focused on me watching a story play out without control, I'd rather watch a film or TV show where that format excels.

What about a kinetic novel?

(In a kinetic novel, the entire story plays out without control, but since you know it's a kinetic novel, you know that ahead of time.)

(Well, technically it might not be completely without control; depending on the work, you might be able to choose when the text advances, and I could even see such a work allowing you to save your place and return later, but I think it still counts.)

those are gargbage , not even games

Something being a non-game doesn't make it garbage.

Would you say that the website gog.com is garbage just because it isn't a game?

it does when they want to sell it as a game
fe would you buy a car that cant roll and just stationary ? that would be a garbage car