I never really understood the visceral reactions to DQ7's graphics back then. Yes, it does not look as good as its peers like FF9, but... a LOT of games didn't. FF9 was a stellar looking game, miles ahead of its contemporaries. DQ7 looked acceptable to me.
The problem wasn't the environments. The problem was the sprites.
FF9 is a bad comparison. Other 32 bit 2d RPGs are preferable comparisons. In the 16 bit era rpg stories were carried by the music. You had a few basic animations: a laugh animation, a walk animation, a looking at the floor sad animation. Sprites were expressionless but mostly charming, especially in Square RPGs. But mostly, it was the music that told the story. Our sense of adventure boils through our blood when we get in the Epoch and that fucking theme plays. You know the one! Or when you're
in DQV and feel so powerless. The music conveys this. When Kefka bursts from the sky like a God, the music makes us feel his power. The Phantom Forest feels haunting due to the music.
In the 32 bit era, 2d sprites could now gain expression. The music is still there, but now we have to had to fill less blanks in our imaginations. So when Delita stabs the queen we feel it as her lifeless body clumps over. Or when Nanami is shot with an arrow in Suikoden II. We feel empathy as the hero holds her body. We feel Luca Blight's power as he's shot with arrow after arrow and doesn't back down. All of this, despite being 2d. 2d reached a point where it could finally tell emotional stories in spite of the music, as well as including it. And then there's Dragon Quest VII, a game that came out the same year as the PLAYSTATION 2.
What do we play as? An obese looking keebler elf. The sprites have no emotion. They're squat and fat and look like dwarves. No SNES RPGs you feel basic empathy. Celise getting beaten up by the guards as she's imprisoned. Celes jumping to her death after Cid dies. Crono's death. But DQ7 has no such thing. It's a game released in 2000 with more limited animations than some of the most better looking SNES RPGs, never mind the psx RPGs I described above. DQ7 is an emotional game, and it's certainly not the game graphics drawing you in. It's the overall story dialogue and music. Especially the music. Sugiyama's soundtrack saves the entire game and gives the most emotional scenes weight that the games sprites just simply lack. They just stand there. They have no quirks. They have no emotions. They have no body behavior. They just stand there. It's so ugly and lifeless. And utterly betrays the beauty of the games story.
If the game had bigger sprites that had more emotion, like Final Fantasy Tactics' or Suikoden II's, no one would have cared about DQ7's graphics. Instead, we play as an obese green dude. UGH!!!
Never mind the lack of enemy battle animations.