It's a common opinion that if the main series maintained its 2D sprites after BW2 that they would be refined and be better than the 3D we have today. However, if you directly compare the amount of animations between the 2D sprites and 3D models, the models have notably more effort put into them than the sprites ever did. Why is it then that people just take for granted that all this work would be put into the 2D sprite animations, when it was never the case prior?
It's fair to compare the differences between the 3D games like Stadium Vs. PBR Vs. SV, but I feel like it should be uncontroversial to say that the lowest quality 3D game still has significantly more effort put into its presentation than most, if not all the 2D sprite games.