>>52470039They WERE trying to make decent-looking Pokemon games around the same time as Little Town Hero. They nailed the general asthetic with Let's Go!, their next problem was to figure out how to translate that to an over-the-shoulder camera in a bigger environment. They got very close with SwSh-- still some visual hiccups and tidbits that make the game look unpolished and ugly, but if they kept building on it, you could see exactly the type of art style they were going for. Yeah, yeah, "what about the double kick animation?" or "But the game still runs bad". I'm talking about the art style only in this.
Then they decided to completely change art styles and start from the ground up there. And now they're trying to do that while ALSO working on optimization (something they have never been good at) and additional focuses on co-op and open world. Why they decided to focus on three big things at the same time? I don't know. If they just kept tweaking the Let's Go! style, they would've nailed it by now and been able to focus on all the mechanics rather than ALL the visuals, too.
It seems like every Switch game they've released ends up making the previous game looks gorgeous by comparison. Legends looks like a fucking oil painting compared to SV.
