I think that some HD@D games look pretty good, it's just the Octopath devs' games that I think look atrocious. I gave it a pass for their first few games since they pioneered the style, but there's no reason their games should still look the same after the Dragon Quest 3 and Star Ocean 2 remakes. It doesn't even make sense from a nostalgic point of view in the case of Elliot. Classic ARPGs didn't look like Final Fantasy IV. They looked like Secret of Mana and Terranigma. Ellliot's art style is objectively worse than the 30-year-old games it's emulating.