The actual reason for the low poly art is a bit more than just "it's easy" (although I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of it), it's much more about having a unified aesthetic throughout the game.
The 2DCGs are all pixel art which limits what sorts of in-game graphics will make sense. Obviously the most straightforward choice would be to have the gameplay be 2D pixel art as well, personally I don't really like 2D games, at least not for developing them, so that's out. I also briefly considered having 2D sprites in a 3D world similar to octopath traveler. This would've been cool, except... uh... maybe I'll just show you:
Honestly I don't think it's technically that terrible, but it also severely gets in the way of having a highly customizable character, and I think just the entire aesthetic of it is pretty trash. Thankfully I'm much more confident in my portrait and CG art.
Since I want to do 3D, that leaves a few broad buckets to aim for: LowPoly Stylized, Realistic, Cartoony, and Anime.
Realistic: Sure I can buy assets for it, but it raises the bar for how "correct" everything needs to look. All of the sudden I need everything to be scaled more accurately, I need my animations to be a lot cleaner, I need facial animations, I need so many more things that the brain requires to say "Yes this is something that
feels correct"
Cartoony: Something like Fortnite, less assets available but still manageable. The issue with this is it's pretty much the same concept of Low Poly, except everything is higher quality. In my opinion it is always better to have the entire game maintain the same quality (See something like Undertale, or Caves of Qud) which is just going to be harder to do. Also it makes getting animation a lot harder, since Mo-Cap (What's most readily available) doesn't feel very good on heavily stylized assets.
Anime: Forget that. Well done anime-inspired 3D graphics look amazing, but it took professional artists around ~20 years before they had anything that felt decent. It also has a serious issue with availability of assets, and usually falls more in the category of individual characters as opposed to a character creation system.
That leaves Low Poly, which is obviously what I chose. "Barebones" graphics means things can be a lot more gamified or arcade-y and still be permissable. Also there's a huge supply of assets available, and I'm able to make my own that fit the style (For example all 3D art on the Patreon page is made using the purchased assets, but the 3D character in the tech demo is something I made to fit into the same style).
So this is a pretty lengthy read, but it's something I actually put a fair amount of thought into when designing the game. I'll probably write up a more formal version of this and start a devlog on the Patreon (Not behind a paywall, I just want more content there).
IF IT WASN'T OBVIOUS, I REALLY LIKE TALKING ABOUT THIS STUFF~
So, uh, keep questioning things and engaging with me, it's pretty fun I guess.
