A lot of people hated Zelda because 900p 30 fps targets. It was said to not be next gen and considered unplayable by some people.

Dragon Quest however, nobody is saying a word. Hmmmmm

900p + good AA + all the bells and whistles they could want + fast loading times = good enough.

1080p isnt everything.

And DQ isnt played because its a series that pushes graphics.

Theres better looking games running at 1080p on PS4, seems like Japanese devs dont know how to optimize that great. Nioh, Nier and this dont look anywhere near as good as something like Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, Doom, Uncharted.

And yet, people wouldnt want a DQ that had HZD like graphics I suspect... it has its own artstyle.

As long as the gameplay is the way people remember & want, and the story & characters are good, its done its part.

The graphics differnce between DQ 11 and the last mainline DQ 9, is gigantic.

I suspect most fans will be pretty pleased with how the graphics are in this.

not the best way to implement realistic X cel shading but everything looks clean and playable so that's what matters.

The game looks gorgeous. It's the successor of DQVIII that I always wanted.

Hmmmmmmm 🤔

Well I would drop Witcher 3 from your little list.  It's a beautiful game but on a technical level not a huge step above DQXI and way bellow Horizon Zero Dawn and yes I own both and have played both on a big screen, quality TV so I know what each looks like.  As for resolution, Digital Foundry discussed this in their Snake Pass review more fully but UE4 games tend to want to take advantage of the engines excellent AA solutions and other image quality, lighting, etc etc aspects at the expense of resolution.  It's a design choice a lot of UE4 devs make.  And you mention optimization issues from Square but they just released Final Fantasy XV not too long back which is quite well optimized.

I will say something.

DQ11 looks better than BOTW.

DQ11 runs at stable 30fps unlike BOTW.

DQ11 is not an action game so it does not need 60fps unlike BOTW.

PS4 Pro exists, so consumers have a choice in performance and looks unlike with Switch.

Still pitiful both for the game and PS4.

On the otherhand the physics/CPU stuff going on in DQ11 likely aren't as hardware hungry as BoTW's, and since it is the CPU which is the major bottleneck of modern consoles, it makes a little more sense that a game which is CPU bound will suffer more in terms of framerate than one which is not. 

PS4 can do much better than DQ11, but then again maybe the game had different priorities as far as financial resources are concerned. Not every game needs to push the boundaries of a system's hardware. Who knows? Maybe SE will release a patch that improves image quality for both PS4 and PS4Pro.