Maybe it's just me, but I never thought Dragon Warrior 7 looked bad. Granted, my experience with video games were much more geared towards handhelds after the SNES, so I guess I got used to graphics that were less than what they could be?
For me, like I said earlier, it's because it looks poor compared to its peers. I'm not talking about Vagrant Story or Final Fantasy IX or Skies or Arcadia, I'm talking about games with a similar graphic style like Grandia, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Xenogears.
Compare.
or even
to this
If there's anything redeeming about DQ7 visually, I'd like to know! The only thing I can think of are the bright and beautiful battles.
These games have better art direction in their pinky finger than DW7. Look at FFT's detailed sprites! Grandia looks like it has a better DQ art style than even DQ that generation. I think the main problem for me are the character sprites. They look so squat. And psx sprites generally are tall and detailed. And here's DQ7 with awful obese dwarves. DW7 has and always will look like eye cancer to me. I cannot defend it. It is one of the top 5 most ugly rpgs (or games period) I have ever played. Looks like vomit. Let's play as an obese green dude. If I were a more shallow person I'd refuse to play DW7. It is that ugly to me. I have no idea what they were thinking and I'm curious of a developer journal to explain why it looks so bad.
Reminder: this game came out the same year as the playstation 2 in Japan.
I"m convinced if DQ7 had the graphics of at least Grandia, the series would be lot more healthy than today. But there's no use crying over spilled milk, as they say.