Illusion games have the best graphics and animations I've seen.
Then you need to get out more. Provided the devs know what they're doing, the best real-time 3D work I've seen have been by folks working in Unreal Engine. Projects like
Wild Life,
Fallen Doll: Operation Lovecraft, and
SUBVERSE. Projects with actual teams involved, so that stuff like animation is done by trained animators. Also, they have dedicated people for things like lighting and scripting.
As it turns out, amateurs' don't make the best animators.
The downside of Illusion games is there is generally zero gameplay. It just Pick/Design your Waifu & Play Animations.
Velesk offers weaker visuals, but more interesting plot/game/management/worlds. I for one am happy to enjoy the spectrum.
I mean, sure, if you only play with the character creator or studio modes? But every Illusion game I've seen has some sort of gameplay mechanics draped over the experience. They might not be management sims, but at least they look somewhat appealing.
Also, I have trouble taking "more interesting plot" seriously with this Dollar Store version of Princess Peach. 'Likes shiny things'!? What DEPTH of character! Anyways...
The kicker is, even Illusion builds their games off of existing tech. At base, they're built with Unity; an engine that is free* and easy to use*, and already used by many small erotica devs. Looking at the dev's website (which is just like the game's lighting, straight out of the early 2000's Web 1.0 ) it appears like this is just their hobby. Fair enough, if they want to write an engine from scratch for kicks, more power to them. But when they're making 1.2K a month on Patreon and soliciting more with the promise of 'eventually' being able to hire dedicated staff? I'm well within my right to critique awful visuals; especially so when said awfulness could be minimized with a less self-indulgent approach to development.
But hey, getting enough people to pay you to flounder around with fugly 3D models in the digital equivalent of smashing actions figures together in a sandbox, seems like a pretty alright job if you can land it. Also, it's cute that they think anyone would want to be paid to work on a amateur one-off proprietary 3D engine built in somebody's closet as an 'hobby' (e.g. its probably spaghetti code with zero documentation).
*Different scaling licenses for personal or commercial use. It is a very well documented and supported platform.
