Fuck graphics. What looks 'good' depends on
aesthetics. Games with 'good graphics' eventually get dated and look old as they inevitably get surpassed by other games chasing after photorealism. But games with 'good aesthetics' are timeless, and continue to look charming and appealing no matter how old they get. It's why
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker from 2003 holds up way better than the first
Call of Duty from 2005. Wind Waker had a solid aesthetics and still looks good today, CoD did not and now just looks incredibly dated.
So that being said...
Number one with a bullet probably has to be
Crimson High, hands down the best looking thing to come out of the Koikatsu Party assets. Not only do all of the characters have a strong unified design and style, they all look like they belong together with each other and the world they inhabit. Plus, the game doesn't skimp out on renders. It doesn't do paperdolls over static backgrounds, rather conversations are shot in sequences, with characters visibly moving around the scene and non-verbally reacting to each other as a conversation progresses. You can tell how other characters feel just by watching how they react to the conversation going on. Not only that, but everyone is every emotive, with the exaggerated anime visuals being used to great effect to help characters convey a whole spectrum of emotions. Fantastic attention to detail all around. The game looks gorgeous, and it does so in such a way that getting a 4090Ti to slap layers of ray-tracing overtop of it and increasing the mesh density of the models by several orders of magnitude (improving the 'graphics') would have little to no impact on the visuals.
The last 2 slots are a 5 way knife fight between
Pale Carnations,
ETERNUM,
Now & Then,
Ripples, and
The Interim Domain.
Special mention for games with fantastic original art, like
My Pig Princess,
What a Legend,
Aurelia,
Seeds of Chaos,
Our Red String,
Quickie: A Love Hotel Story.
