How important is art style to you?

[Rev1]

[QUOTE=Tron]Like Rev I love (Tactics games). Unfortunately many of them have cute or goofy anime characters that essentially ruin the experience for me. For example Disgea on the PS2. It had such a ridiculous storyline and awful looking art design that I didn't play for more than an hour or two before I exchanged it.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, you are definitely right about the typical design of Tactics games. It seems like they always have an anime feel to them. I personally don't mind it but it is a solid point. The characters always seem to be stereotypes of certain personalities. I wonder why more Tactical RPG's don't have a more realistic design to them. I mean there are a few, but anime influence seems to have about 95% of the market.

[Tron1]

I agree with your tastes ptdebate & you also bring up another issue. That issue is that of mature-rated games focusing too heavily on poor lighting, drab colors and excessive shadows. Personally I'd rather see Atari-like graphics then some shadow of a figure surrounded by dark colors on the Xbox 360. An example of making a mature-rated game with good colors is Twisted Metal II (PS1). The game is full of bright visuals and you can see enemies far in the distance. The opposite is true if Twisted Metal BLack (PS2). The game has mature-themed content, but you can't see Shiite.

Rev - It bugs me a lot, but I've also concluded that games that focus overly on anime or being cute also tend to fail in terms of being substantial in gameplay. Feel free to prove me wrong with some examples that best Tactics Ogre, Ogre Battle, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Brigandine or Advance Wars

[Greisha1]

[QUOTE=ptdebate]This became an issue for me during my recent experience with Final Fantasy X and X-2.

By and large, the art style of both games turns me off. Specifically I mean the costumes, but other aspects of the architecture and world are ugly or uninteresting as well. It's probably the main reason why it took me 13 years to get into FFX! A dress made out of belts? Physics-defying blue hair? Garish (and totally inconsistent blitzball "uniforms"? Backless spaghetti-strap outfits? Eesh...

Eventually, I was able to ignore these things and simply enjoy the game. But visual perception is, for better or worse, a huge factor to me when choosing a game to play.


[/QUOTE]

I was going to say: "Oh yeah, Art Style doesn't matter! It's all about the gameplay!" ... and then I read this. I'm 100% in this boat.

So, yes ... art style does matter.  

[velcrozombie1]

@Tron

I remember the Disgaea game I played for the PS2 not looking so hot (I didn't play it long enough to decide if I liked the game or not), but Disgaea 4 for the PS3 looks really slick to me:

 

As for a high-quality tactics game with anime-style graphics, I've heard really nice things about the PS2 game Grim Grimoire by VanillaWare (who made the gorgeous beat-em-up Dragon's Crown, which is probably worth it for the visuals alone):

Grim Grimoire:
 

Dragon's Crown:
 

Also, even if I weren't into anime-style graphics, I would still think that Persona Arena, the fighting game spinoff the the
Atlus RPG series, looked fantastic:

 

[velcrozombie1]

WARNING: LOTS OF IMAGES FORTHCOMING

I was going to do a longer explanation of the types of visuals I enjoy in games, but I've already spent a lot of time gathering images, so I'm gonna cut this as short as I can.

I have nothing against realistic 3D graphics, as long as there is a lot of care used in creating the world and the people/creatures that populate it. For instance, the PS2 Silent
Hill games still look good (better than their current-gen counterparts, in fact) and while the humans in Bayonetta don't have the best character models, the imagination used
in creating the angelic beings that you battle with more than make up for it:

Silent Hill 3:
 

Silent Hill 4:
 

Bayonetta:
 

Having said that, I'm probably a bigger fan of cel-shaded or otherwise exaggerated 3d graphics. I think the cartoonish designs
for Team Fortress 2 will look good for far longer than a more naturalistic style would have. As far as cel-shading, I tend to
like more extreme stylization: Killer 7 and Killer Is Dead (both by Suda 51), Okami and El Shaddai are good examples.

Team Fortress 2:
 

Killer 7:
 

Killer Is Dead:
 

Okami:
 

El Shaddai:
 

I'm also a big fan of games with a strong sense of visual texture - games where it feels as if you can reach out and touch
the objects on screen. Examples of these would be the Littlebigplanet games, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Broken Age.

Littlebigplanet:
 

Kirby's Epic Yarn:
 

Broken Age:
 

Maybe my favorite style overall is when the sprites are hand-drawn (or, at the very least, they look hand-drawn). This also
accounts for the anime games in my previous post:

Rayman Origins:
 

Skullgirls:
 

A Boy and His Blob:
 

Limbo:
 

Having said all this, gameplay is still the key. Visuals like this will get my attention, but the game mechanics have to be
polished and interesting enough to keep me invested once the shock of the new style has worn off (Skullgirls pulls this off,
while I quit playing Littlebigplanet after 4-5 hours). On the other hand, an unremarkable-looking game can keep me
invested if the gameplay is there: Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami aren't don't look anywhere near as good as any of the
games I'll listed, but I poured dozens of hours into each.

[Vexer1]

To me it sounds awfully narrow-minded to judge a game purely on it's art style.

[velcrozombie1]

@darkrage/Vexer
I'm going to assume you're talking to me, even though you didn't say my name. Ignore this if
I'm wrong:

Did you miss the part at the end where I say that, in the end, gameplay matters most? That some of my favorite games are ordinary visually? I'm just saying that there are certain art styles that will more readily grab my attention that others, and those tend to be on the less realistic side of the spectrum.

When I buy a game, there's always at least one 'hook' behind it. Maybe the company has done so much good work in the past that I trust them no matter what (Nintendo, Platinum, Valve); maybe the story sounds interesting (Spec Ops: The Line); maybe the game has an unusual premise (Shadow of the Colossus being made up only of boss fights with giant monsters, for example) or a mechanic that sounds unique (Portal's portal gun or Mirror's Edge first-person parkour). If the visuals are striking enough (Dragon's Crown or Skullgirls), I will occasionally buy a game purely for them, but there usually has to be other things about the game I care about first.

[Vexer1]

I was not talking to you specifically, I was just speaking in general.

[Rev1]

[QUOTE=Tron]Rev - It bugs me a lot, but I've also concluded that games that focus overly on anime or being cute also tend to fail in terms of being substantial in gameplay. Feel free to prove me wrong with some examples that best Tactics Ogre, Ogre Battle, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Brigandine or Advance Wars[/QUOTE]

Hmm.. When you first described what you were talking about I thought you meant anime in general (which all the games you listed are pretty much inspired by anime). But if you're talking about games that focus on mostly being cute or extremely exaggerated I would have to say I haven't played a ton of games in that category either. Disgaea would probably be the most well known example and I have never really gotten into the series. Hmmm.... not quite sure on this one. I personally don't mind the exaggerated look but I really can't think of too many examples where I got into a tactics game that was in the category that you described.