A lot of people claimed that Bloodborne was the "best looking" too, and I'd say that it was actually worse looking as a whole than even Demon's Souls or the first Dark Souls. Graphically there was no contest (different hardware too though), but it lacked variety and the color palette was extremely boring after a while.
There's more to art than simple resolution and the number of polygons or clutter. Even that's not so bad if the textures actually have a worn look. But just like Bloodborne, most of the screenshots (and from what many who have actually played have said) that I've seen make the game look like it's full of objects that were constructed from a wax casting, and look brand new, despite supposedly being ancient. Plus, much of the architecture in entire areas are colored exactly the same. To me that makes it look even more fake than objects that have less polygons with textures at half the resolution, but that have more texture variety.
Currently replaying Dark Souls 2, and yeah, overall the level designs and aesthetics are pretty boring all around. There are some areas however (like Heide's) that just have an amazing contrast with colors and texture variety. Bloodborne had nothing comparable in that regard. It just had lots of shiny blue bricks, lots of spires and fog.
