I like the idea of Spotlight. It can be a different way to use the medium, focusing on narration rather than character placement. I’ve read full stories in Spotlight, and others that used Spotlight for a scene or two (including my own). I find it great for scenes where the characters aren’t exactly existing in a physical space, but I still want to use the Episode sprites and animations.
What makes me not like Spotlight in practise is that half-second “swoosh” as the character moves on- and off-screen. 
It’s enough to trigger my motion sickness.
I’ve read some stories where the “swoosh” happens infrequently enough (lots of narration without the character onscreen, and when the character did speak, they spoke in paragraphs). But I’ve also read some where the writer was only using Spotlight for a contest, and used short dialogue, so the swooshes made me have to drop the story.
But yeah, I won’t stop reading a Spotlight story unless it makes me stop lol. 
And if it was too much swooshing, it probably should’ve been using Cinematic in the first place, so I’m not missing much.
I figure there are 2 reasons people don’t like Spotlight:
- Too many people who just use it for the sake of using it, and don’t adapt their story to it
- “i DoN’T wAnT tO rEaD aLl ThAt NaRrAtIon” betch go watch Netflix then
There’s definitely a case that can be made for including narration on Episode; yes, this is a visual medium, but we all share the same 200 backgrounds, 150 animations, 12 eye colours… etc. After 100 stories, the visuals aren’t new anymore. Even in full cinematic stories, you have to infer plenty of things that aren’t shown. A format that mixes the narration of books with the Episode assets allows the writer to stretch the Episode visuals in ways that can’t be shown with just spot placement.