>>47736906Because of hardware limitations, basically. Game Freak wanted more dynamic sprites (you can see this as far back as Crystal), so rather than using these newer, higher resolution sprite sheets for better resolution but static sprites, they decided to make more animated sprites that would attempt to take advantage of the size of the sprites for more frames of animation. This would keep a more consistent art style overall, as well. Granted, the DS tends to make things a pixelated mess when they try shit like that, but even Dragon Quest 9 struggled with stuff like that occasionally. Hardware advancements and limitations are a tricky thing to balance.
