I used to think the same even when it came to games that didn't have animations. But after I played a game or two I enjoyed that was lackluster in 1 or both areas but had either good character or a story I enjoyed I slowly changed my mind and none of that matters to me much anymore. Tho the only exception is if the renders of the LI / characters look like ass I can deal with everything else sucking but not the actual characters.
Definitely different for me. I get irritated quite easily these days about even the smallest things. Like the houses these people live in looking sterile right out of a furniture shop catalogue and the lighting looking like a spotlight from the front. An artist needs to have an eye for these things or just drop it altogether.
Or that one clothing store you see in every single VN when they go shopping....i mean, come on there has to be more than one daz asset for that.
But similar for me, was more tolerant a couple of years back...sandbox is something which rubs me the wrong way, nowdays i just have a look at it and when it isn't without any grind, one click to navigate and a clear guide i put the game on ignore. No patient for games which don't respect the players time.
For aniamtion i don't care all that much about it, i mean, none of the japn VN's had it when i was starting playing them more than 20 years ago and story + characters are pretty much anything what count's for me.
That being said, while games don't need animations, i do enjoy good ones.
What i don't like are bad-medicore ones, which so many games have...rather just don't use them them at all, if the dev has either no experience or not the hardware to make decent ones.
With the time spend on bad animations you can have a large number renders which do a better job at it.
