I CBA to replicate what he did (especially since rpa extract tool doesn't work with archives in this new version), but the result is sprites that are lit like 1990ties mediocre CGI, they just don't look like they belong in the sceneI wouldn't say the new method handles it worse. It is actually better in technical terms.
(The white lining is where the cutout is done in the image below)
I feel, the main reason for it to look cheap or bland; must be due to the decision on saturation level of the renders.
I would say the "older" renders were "a glossy type", while the "newer" is more of "a matte finish"
The point is,
he has changed the way the renders are edited for newer ones.
- or -
perhaps rendering with a different skin tone preset (Translucency / Diffuse).
With "Saturation" levels as shown below - you can notice the difference.
(I feel the right side saturated one seems to resemble the older renders)
View attachment 2461779
P.S. This is not a direct comparison on what changes he has done.
However, even her Jean shorts look better with higher "Saturation" and so is her skin.
had he simply rendered all of those images in full, didn't screw around with PNG or 100% quality jpegs, he could simply not bother with sprites and have full images with perfect lighting
he could probably save time by not using sprites at all and just rendering it all out in full, if you use your brain and remove unnecessary stuff from scenes when rendering (which includes lights that barely have any effect, mirrors etc.), then 98% of the full images in this game will take 5min max to render to a reasonable sample size (I rarely go past 400 with nvidia filtering)
size wise - if they would use 80-90% jpegs, then size would also not blow out, 500 image update would 300-400mb in size, but these "devs" pixelfuck everything and blow up game sizes for absolutely no reason
bathroom scenes with mirros - that is different story, but how many of those images would be in the game, be smart with camera framing and you can hide those mirrors for majority of renders
these devs make these games for 4-5 or more years, that is a LOT of time to improve technique and increase productivity, but basically all of them tend to do exactly opposite, less and less content, more and more time between releases and so on