I think the smoke effect is cel-shaded, that's why it looks cartoonish and "cheap". Even though I don't really like it, doesn't it actually help the performance without slowing down the game?
I'm not an expert at all, but if i'm not mistaking, the way many games create smoke effects is by just layering many transparent 2D images of smoke clouds on top of eachother, and then making them move with the wind. The smaller each individual image is, the better the effects, but since you need more of the smaller images to cover the same place, it is more expensive for the framerate.
So what they did in ACiT is, they took huge images, and.. idk, just said they were aiming for a cartoony effect?
Well.. i don't really buy it. I mean, if it's not that noticeable it's okay, but in ACiT you can literally count the individual images..