Super Mario Odyssey and Luigi's Mansion 3 put even these newest Pokémon titles to shame in the graphical department.
Odyssey has such a masterful art style and graphical tricks to make a 900p and below game look nice on weak hardware. Ditto with Luigi's Mansion 3.
In the year 2025, we have Pokémon titles that look better in technical terms than just about any OG Xbox or Wii title, but still not as good as a large amount of Xbox 360 and PS3 games. Switch hardware can do more. GF just doesn't seem to care, and given the financial success of Pokémon I guess they don't need to.

I genuinely think Odyssey looks bad, so I simply don't agree there. (okay I just think it looks bad aesthetically and find it hard to look at it fairly lol) Luigi's Mansion 3 is a small game, so even if it was is graphically impressive, that's not saying much. Bigger games have to spread their graphics more thin so that they can run well.

People need to be pulling receipts with this 7th gen stuff. Show me some open world gen 7 games comparable in graphics to what we're seeing in ZA, and when you realize you're only looking at a small handful of the graphically most impressive realistic games on those systems, rethink some things.

Switch hardware can do a little bit more than PS3, but again, the system is still between PS3 and PS4. It's not some powerhouse system. It's basically a PS3 Pro. People have to stop expecting insane graphics from just this franchise and on this system.

Xenoblade X (Wii U):

Pokemon ZA (Switch):

If you broke it down, Pokemon has "better" graphics in a lot of areas, but Xenoblade X just looks so much better. Most of that doesn't just feel like the tech, it feels like effort. Effort was put into filling out Xenoblade X's world with features and grass whereas Switch Pokemon games have always looked kind of lazy. I do think ZA looks better than some of the ones in the past, and the city actually looks pretty reasonable (and to be fair, the city in Xenoblade X looked like assssss) but Pokemon is putting nowhere near the best-looking games (graphics + art + effort) that the Switch can handle. 

Well, If we're talking open-world games from 7th gen that look visually better i would say Just Cause 2, inFamous 2, and GTA V. There are probably more i could list but those are the first that come to mind.

Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3, Forza Horizon, Skyrim, Oblivion, Batman Arkham City, Assassin's Creed series, MGSV, LA Noire, Burnout Paradise, Need for Speed series, Sleeping Dogs, the list just goes on and on.

Whether its graphics look bad or not is a matter of opinion to some degree, I guess, but it does look like lazy graphics, lazy design and lazy presentation. The pokemon are the recycled 3d models they always use, maybe with some tweaks they did back in Arceus. Also, the proportions are all wrong, which is jarring to see (we see an onyx barely bigger than its trainer in the trailer), which is needed because you cannot just have a giant pokemon roaming around the city without godzilla implications, but again, very jarring to the eye, a limitation of the open world gameplay. The Moves and environmental effects aren't particularly flashy or complex, the most visually appealing I've seen is the mega evolution effects, and we will see the exact same effect over and over again. The overworld is incredibly repetitive: if the game happens entirely within a city, we're going to see the same copypaste buildings, trees, cars and decorations over and over. And let's face it, if they want to replicate Luminose from XY, there weren't that many distinct parts of the city, so it's not like we're going to see GTA levels of city variety. The fact they put the mons in wild areas within the cities saves them from having to design forests, deserts, mountains, caves, sea... Anything that adds visual variety and could spice up the presentation of the title, full city all the time is going to become tiring fast.The city also looks quite deserted, it makes little sense that, if we're in THE big kalosian metropolis, we don't see many more people going around, why do you have a big city if there are not enough people to fill it?

Not to mention it makes no sense a city would be swarmed with wild pokemon to such an extent, by Pokemon logic one shouldn't enter tall grass without a pokemon to defend oneself, why would you let hundreds of mons just roam around the city? There's a wild gyarados in one of the cannals, do they know what those things do? You are taking tea and biscuits in one of the cafes, and suddenly a talonflame sweeps in and eats your food, what are you going to do, scare it away? It's going to burn your face!

Being smaller isn't an indicator of quality, but in this case, with all we've seen so far, it is an indicator of a quick and lazy job. There is little we've seen here they hadn't already made for one game or another. The way they have done it feels like something they have scrambled to have released between Sc/Vi and the next gen for the Switch 2, when they could have just dedicated all of the time and resources for said game.

Hell, do you know how this concept would have worked? Make it about a big metropolis that has been abandoned for decades, zombie apocalypse style. You have to explore what kind of catastrophe happened to the place, while also fending off the different mons that have made it its new home. It would give more visual variety, since an abandoned city could be great to explore empty buildings, maze-like environements or areas where nature has adapted to the structures in unique ways. It would make sense that there is little to not people, because that's the entire point of an abandoned city.

Everyone has different standards for what they consider good graphics or not.

To me personally these Pokémon games looks like garbage and that's embarassing considering how well they sell.

There's no excuse for that. Gamefreak knows whatever they put out will sell so they just don't care.

Xenoblade X and Breath of the Wild are both Wii U games and the two just looks way better than any Pokémon game on the Switch.

Reading OP, it sounds like thr big takeaway is supposed to be that Pokémon Legends Z-A is a big step up from previous entries; this is very different, however, than saying the games look good. For the wealthiest brand in human history to not have graphics which even come close to the likes of Kirby (and the Forgotten Lands), Metroid Prime Remastered, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Animal Crossing NH, Paper Mario TTYD Remake, Pikmin 3/4, and so many others…it]s outrageous.

Complaining about Pokemon selling well even though the games look bad seems just like console warriors that are angry that Pokemon outsells AAA games that releases on their platforms of choice. Its not Pokemon's fault that no one is buying FF7 Rebirth on PS5 and instead just play Gacha and other live service games on the console.

The problem with Pokémon extends far past “the games look bad.” All the way up until 2021, the underlying gameplay loop of Pokémon had yet to change or evolve much at all from its initial 1998 debut on the **GameBoy**. Again, we are talking about the most profitable franchise in human history: it is perfectly reasonable for consumers to be demanding more. (And noting that demands will only ever be met upon seeing a dramatic fall in sales figures, it makes sense why people would be in favor of seeing these number fall off.) GameFreak cannot continue to get away with this abysmal quality assurance.