>>58947224>they made up for it with a larger overworld compared to other games on the same platform and they were never outright ugly.This. RSE for example have pretty subpar graphics, but the trade off is that Hoenn was a completely seamless open world. That was pretty rare back then, especially on the Gameboy, and made it stand out more than other games with better graphics. Also, the fact that Pokemon games are still more memorable and beloved than many other games with better visuals should tell you that graphics are not everything.
I think the recent Switch games get more criticism for their graphics for a few reasons. One is that they don't do anything better than their competitors. RSE offered a larger open world than any of its peers, but today there are many games that offer larger AND better looking worlds than Pokemon does. The gameplay is pretty stagnant too and just hasn't kept up with its competitors. A game like Minecraft shows that people will still overlook graphic fidelity if you offer a bigger scale and/or more gameplay depth, and Pokemon used to do that, but it doesn't anymore.
Another thing is that 3D graphics leave less to the imagination than 2D. Pixel art can get away with being a little less impressive because it's more stylized, and you're already expected to fill in a lot with your imagination so it can be more abstracted. Pokemon on the Gameboy doesn't look ugly, it's just simple. But that doesn't really fly in 3D unless you lean into heavily stylized art, which Pokemon doesn't.
