Ni No Kuni on the PS3 is gorgeous.

Pokémon as a series that sells an ungodly amount of copies should be putting more polish and production value into their titles. Pokémon games just look cheap and low effort graphically and it's nothing to do with specs.

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.

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.

We can go back and forth on whether it's lazy forever. I just don't agree that it is. There are over 1000 Pokemon models at this point. It's not lazy if they don't always update every single one, and we have no reason to believe that they will not update any at all, especially when they already look so good now. That's not lazy. That's just good priorities.

I also think the size issue is an issue, but it's not a limitation of open world gameplay. The last Legends game had proper proportions, so this is being done for some other reason. I suspect it's a balance issue, now that the combat is real time. Size+speed will effect big and slow Pokemon a lot when it comes to being able to dodge attacks now in away it didn't before. I think the trade off isn't worth it though, and agree that the sizes should be corrected, but that's a practice change.

I just don't believe that the moves aren't flashy. I don't know if I'd call them complex, but I don't think that matters. They look good. That's all that matters. There are over 1000 attack moves in pokemon atm, and after changing the battle system significantly with this game, all the attack animations look really good and flashy. I think Outrage can look like that forever and be fine. Rock Slide looks great. Bulldoze looks... annoying because it doesn't match the move name, but the animation itself looks high quality. I don't think it's an issue that Mega Evolution uses the same effect over an over, considering the same thing is being done over and over. We don't criticize cool Doom weapons for using the same animation over and over again. It's the same gun shooting the same bullet.

I think it's likely going to have way more variety than what we're seeing when it comes to building variety than what we're seeing, but they haven't shown us that, so I'm not going to pretend I know. The only things I'll say is that a big part of the last Legends game was drastically changing a previously visited area, and that the single biggest thing we know about that game is that it's centered around urban redevelopment specifically to make it more habitable for pokemon. I'm very confident that Lumiose will not only look very different from the one in XY, but that it will probably look different in a way that will personally annoy me. This is speculation, so don't take this as an actual refutation of your point, but considering how the 5 zones are marked by colors, I wouldn't be surprised if they were focused on a collection of types, and the reason this zone looks so normal is because it's the Vert/Green Zone and is the most normal/grassy.

I 100% don't believe that ZA will have the architectural complexity of a GTA, but I don't think that makes it lazy, and I don't think that means it will be filled with copy-pasted buildings. It's not the case that if a franchise as big as Pokemon doesn't make it's experimental spin off series as big and complex as GTA, that that means it's being lazy. I do think there could be more people in the city though. I just don't think that's as big an issue as you do, because I don't think the other issues you're seeing exist, so this is one of few on a clear line of improvement for me.

I'm not going to get into Pokemon lore stuff, as that's beyond the scope of this thread. A lot of things in Legends 1 didn't make sense and are plot holes/lore breaking, like them retconning Pokemon to shrink before they go into a pokeball, instead of the Pokeball using technology to shrink Pokemon, but that has nothing to do with how the game looked graphically.

They've never made a massive city, and they've never done real time combat using mainline game stats. Those are literally the two biggest things revealed here. I just do not agree with your assessment of their effort here at all. I don't see an issue with it taking place in modern kalos Lumiose that isn't abandoned. Also, I don't even know if I'm being fair to this game. Maybe it's just the screenshots I chose, but there are way more characters on screen in the screenshot of ZA than of the other two games, and I'm not even counting the Pokemon. I don't know why I have to agree that the city is empty just because it's not full. There is an in between.

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.

Thank you for this good comparison. This is really all I mean. If you think Xenoblade looks better aesthetically, that totally makes sense to me, and this thread isn't directed at you. My issue is when comparisons like this exist, yet people act like ZA looks like a PS2 game, or even a bad PS3 game.

I personally don't think ZA looks lazy, but I get if you thought BDSP, Let's Go, or SwSh looked lazy. I'm personally against the idea that SV was a lazy game. I think it was a really ambitious game that wasn't very competently made. But even then, I'd get why someone might mistake the incompetence for laziness. I just see neither of those here. Or at least not incompetence to a large degree here.

These are some of the most graphically impressive realistic games on a system close in power to the Switch. Are the textures better? No. Character models more detailed? Not really, save for the faces because one is realistic. Are the trees better? From what I can see, no. Foliage? From what I can see, no.

The buildings do look more complex and varied than in ZA. I can admit that. Enough were it makes ZA look like a game unfitting for it's generation or bad or lazy though? No. You didn't name any games in this style, and neither did curl-6. You are not seeing games in this style in this scale that have worlds that look like Infamous or GTA V, because that wouldn't fit.

And more than half of them don't even make it in to the games. Recent games have a bestiary the size of standard RPG game. Dragon Quest 11 had over 400 monsters and they were all updated and well animated. So the ones that are being used, why shouldn't they be updated? What's the excuse? Hell, at the rate they're going with the limited Pokedex they could update a batch over time, but they're not even taking advantage of that. 

EDIT: Digimon Cyber Sleuth had 350 Digimon and they didn't have the luxury of reusing models. All made from scratch.

Doubtful, considering how you'd think there would be a correlation between success, and increase in quality in areas where there is a lot of room for improvement. 

I'm of that opinion as well, and I own the prequel.

Gamefreak may not have the talent/manpower capable of producing something that would look a bit more akin to what I'd expect from a big release from such a massive franchise.
But all it really should take is money, which they print.

It's not unusual for studios to expand, or move people over from other divisions who have the experience needed.
I'm only referring to the visuals for the environments btw, but to me it is startling to see this being a new Pokemon release.

I think thats 8 tufts of grass next to him.
The car almost appears to have one flat color for each texture.
The often repeated and simple building patterns in the one single city this game takes place in is a choice.
Some definitely have a lot more character than what's seen in this particular shot though. And I think the pavement looks fine.

Persona 5 is a 2016 PS3 game, which is notably weaker than Switch.
And Switch even runs the upgraded Royal version.




P5 is very simple and unremarkable when it comes to its environmental textures.
But not that simple, and they make use of colors and object placement to make things look more lively.

Lots of different signs, colors, shapes, and lights. There are some signs similar to these in Pokemon Z-A, but seem to be more like an exception rather than the rule. 
The books on the left side in this shot look very simple and flat. But the ones with the spines facing outwards have a lot more and varied detail.

The bookshelves are very simple. But they do look like wood.
I need to see the flower beds in Z-A more up close, but from a distance it looks like they used the bucket tool in MS paint to fill it with brown.

Which is fine at times, but that's right behind the car with the same issue, and surrounded by a lot of similarly flat and empty presentation.

And while I think the pavement looks fine in Z-A, here in P5 there are asymetrical paterns, popping colors, cracks in the tiles, garbage/flyers lying on the ground, some knocked over cones, etc.

With how much Pokemon is earning, I think the environments in a Pokemon city should look way better than Persona 5.
But if anything I think they look notably worse in most regards.

Not referring to character models, which I think look better in Z-A. At least when it comes to detail. But with the drawback of having notably fewer npc's it seems.

I couldn't find an example of a cartoonish open world game so those are the examples i used for 7th gen.

I'd say they do absolutly look better. especially in terms of lighting. I think that's what really hurt Z-A the most as lighting can change the way a game looks significantly even if every other aspect remained the same. The lighting looks very flat like a PS2 game but considering this is on a system that has better graphical capabilities than a PS3 you would expect better. Look at Xenoblade 2 on Switch. It's not a realistic looking game but the way the lighting is implemented gives the game lot's of depth in it's visuals compared to ZA which looks flat in comparison, of course the overall art direction probably helps too.