if only that parent company also owned pokemon to some level…
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For me, graphics are extremely important in my enjoyment of a game. I’ve dropped games before that were otherwise entertaining to play, but looked awful in terms of style and art direction. I pick up on too many small details like what shaders were used (or misused), random clipping, glitching graphics, etc and it pulls my attention away from the game too much to be fun.
To be clear, I think “realistic” 3D graphics are the worst offenders here. Games with a strong, fun style and identity are my favorite, and that includes the older pixel pokemon generations. Other games, like Skyward Sword, BOTW, Infinity Nikki, Animal Crossing, OFF, Stardew Valley, etc aren’t trying to be hyper realistic and are using it to their advantage. The graphics need to be consistent with what the game is going for thematically, and they don’t have to be brand new shiny hyper realistic 3D to be good.
Recent Pokemon gens have desaturated colors too much unfortunately with the move to 3D models, but I have high hopes for WiWa based on the trailer.
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Doesnt really bother me. If the graphics are bad then my imagination more than makes up for it. I just hope theres alot of content and story. Seeing a ton of empty space in a game world when it couldve been utilized for a side quest, or roaming area bothers me more.
I quite liked the older games where almost every house could be entered, and wild grass/trainers were around every corner of a route, and items both seen and hidden were spread out more. Nowadays items seem they just try to fill areas instead of make them interesting. Many NPCs are boring, and seem to have the same personality aside from the main story characters. Still having fun over the 30 year span though.
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Very important.
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Unreal Engine has shown that its about the artist and the art as much as anything. I think the ugliness of the game “Concord” cemented the idea of ugliness being a choice. However not trying is also a choice of apathy too. And an even bigger issue plaguing gaming since around 2013 has been the lack of quality coding.
As far as pokemon, looking back at the human character designs for omega ruby and alpha sapphire and comparing it to scarlet and violet, and I realize how ugly these lifeless looking characters are. Especially the player character is the bland and even a little creepy.
Hardware can’t be an excuse. Graphics matter. But I think people confuse graphics with hardware specs a lot of the time.
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Games with excellent art style are enjoyable with dogshit graphics, but obviously they would be even better with excellent graphics.
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Very important, but how we define good graphics is subjective and can vary depending on the game. In most games I don’t necessarily want/need the graphics to be hyper realistic or ultra detailed . I still want my video games to look like video games.
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Im not a big gamer but I think it depends on the game.
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I have a hard time bringing myself to play the older Pokemon games, and at first I thought it was because of the graphics (time is definitely another factor for me but that’s another story lol). But I love playing Stardew Valley, whose style is reminiscent of 16bit. It’s so charming and feels like there is a lot of thought and care put into the art and game itself. So maybe the people who mentioned style, gameplay, and overall polish, are on to something - it’s not just graphics.
I probably haven’t played the older games for more complicated reasons, but I will also admit I haven’t finished any of the recent games, either - the graphics for the mainstream games on the switch weren’t the best (although if we are comparing them to BotW or TotK then they are just laughably bad) but it wasn’t the graphics that made me stop playing. The gameplay was really subpar… Arceus was the only mainstream game I really enjoyed in recent years. I haven’t yet played ZA so not sure about that one, yet.
A bit of a ramble-y, round-about answer, but essentially, for me graphics can really help the experience of playing a game, but aren’t the most important part of it.
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I think I prefer the art style over how powerful or realistic the graphics are, I think there is a nice balance in there too
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My personal opinion? Gen 2 had the best graphics.
It still had the 2D sprites so the game hadn’t lost its charm, but it also had incredibly vibrant colors. Just writing about it makes me tingle inside.
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If you consider the popularity of the older games, then not important at all! We want a good story, good sprite design and lots of different completion based challenges that feel well connected to the world.
Hell, sprites don’t event need to be animated! Looking at you, fire red and leaf green.
Give people the feel of an original game and it will take care of itself. Good graphics are a lovely bonus.
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Not as important as the terminally online Reddit crowd makes it seem.
I played SV and enjoyed it a lot despite the trees and whatever other complaints there were.
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Most people don’t play text-based games these days*, so I’d say it’s very important that a game has graphics.
*(One might argue that AI chatbots are a new, very popular text-based game.)
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One key thing I liked about Crystal over Emerald and even all Gen IV games is how Pokémon are animated in the game.
This is Lugia in Crystal:
This is Emerald:
And this is Soul Silver:
If you look very closely, you would notice that the animation in Emerald and Soul Silver is simply toggling between two fixed whole sprites with some image transformations:
While Crystal has a series of several sprites to animate all the little details on Lugia separately such as neck, tail and wings:
Which makes Lugia in Crystal moves more like naturally than in other two games albeit released several years earlier and also made me fond of it. It was not until Gen V did we get these little details back.
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Depends on the game play. If the game play is awesome I am more accepting to weaker graphics. But I do not tolerate bad game play in combination with bad graphics.
That said… apart from a 20+ year old MMORPG and Minecraft I don’t really play games any more. I am often very disappointed on what is out there and am not willing to spend a zillion to upgrade the PC or game console for just one game.
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I will also say art direction is the most important thing for me. There’s so many different ways to stylize a game, colors, shadows, saturation, use of space. Without art direction, all games would be end up looking the same. For me, it is also a piece of what makes a world compelling.
For example, I love the art direction of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX as it applies this soft, sketchy, cell shaded art style that references some of the original artwork made for the game, and this style replaces the original releases pixel graphics. I love this style and think it is an upgrade. (And I say this as a die hard pixel Pokemon fan)
And this is not to say games set in some level of realism can’t have style choices. One of my favorite games of all time is the original BioShock. While set in a “realistic” world, you are always surrounded by the gentle green-ish blue hue of the ocean. Drastic shadows and dark corners. Water dripping. Electricity flickering. When harsh light does shine on something, they almost have a dream-like glow.
I feel like I don’t really understand the art direction of the recent main series Pokemon games. Remove the Pokemon and to me, I would probably not recognize the overworlds as belonging to a Pokemon game specifically. Legends Arceus is the closest of the recent main series games to feel like it has a specific art direction.
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