Noone, whoever started creating anything of art, expected to already do his masterpiece.
Hence, his (her?) first creation usually will be a total desaster.
Which is absolutely ok and normal.
But ... even being his first, there will be lots of critics, good and bad.
Point is, to take - each - of them serious, becourse whoever says something about, had taken his time to engage with that piece of art.
Brushing some off, just becourse they dont use a nice way of speach, isnt helpful at all ... for both sides.
Noone needs to be a designer himself to judge about visual things.
Beauty usually lays within the eyes of the viewer ... to a specific point.
But there are some basic rules.
If a creator only wants to express his point of view, he will logically face lots of other views, which he might interpret as negativ critics.
So the general point is, which point of view will the creation run? The one of the most part of the audiance or the one of the creator? This decision needs to be made before even starting a creation.
Imagine an engineer, who wants to create a new car.
He might have his own views of a great one, look and power.
But, will that one sell well or is his view just a minority?
Colani is a good example for this. He created several masterpieces, sadly noone wanted to have by their looks.
But, he also created some of the best cars ever.
Point is... his first attemps were horrible.
I take the game as one of those first attemps.
Now the basic plot is done, the first critics arrived, its known, what to do better.
Don't hesitate to do so. You're far away from your final result.
And the same way, it takes a lot of time from a little baby to become a beautiful woman, it will take time for a game to become great.
All, thats needed is a lot of effort and ability to do things better. Noone is born as master.
my 2 cents.