I personally find this move beautiful. The animations are insensifying so much with the development of new graphic technologies. It looks like a dream and it's not even 8K or even 4K.
I just am trying to imagine what the animations will look like when the anime will reach up to Kaido's clash.
The animator for that scene is Katsumi Ishizuka(his an animator with a huge history on the show, animating or being involved in animating many of the most iconic moments of the show, and even just in Wano). His scenes tend to take a long time to animate due to the large number of paper sheets drawn on, and the complexity of the animation.
As for this episode, it was perfectly okay. To be honest, it was significantly better than expected. I expected to really hate this episode, but now I'm sort of okay with it.
It didn't have any really good animation to speak of, but that was to be expected considering it was mostly outsourced. In saying that, the art was corrected to be decent enough, so it didn't really look ugly.
Directionally it was also decent enough. Nothing exceptional, but it did a decent enough job with the keeping things flowing. The pacing was actually pretty solid all things considered.
Overall. A perfectly serviceable episode.
Next episode looks like it could be good. There were some really atmospheric shots in the next episode preview(specifically around Zoro and Hiyori), and Katsumi Ishizuka is doing a scene, which is more than enough reason to watch an episode of the show nowadays. Should be decent.