Yeah I can definitely comprehend people not liking it. It's a style that I personally find incredibly appealing. Whether it is partially nostalgic or just clicks with me I can't say. It definitely reminds me of Golden Axe and Drekmore from Gummi Bears.

Still I'm hesitant to call this good pixelart (edit: except for the game's banner - that's aces), even though I really like it. Instead I'd rather point to something like Prince of Persia 2 or Dune 2.

Addendum;
While I can play ASCII and Tiled games, or even pixelated games, just fine.
The style is a very important factor. Something that often cause some pixel games to be unplayable to me.
When the graphics get in the way of, and obstruct, gameplay.
Like the aforementioned Environmental Station Alpha. There's also a popular rogue-lite that, whose name now escapes me. Not Dead Cells. "Eagle eye" view and "artistic". Three word name?
Anyway.

https://www.gog.com/game/colt_canyon ?

Yes! That's the one, thank you. The characters are barely visable against the background. Terrible graphics, just terrible design. Especially for such a fast paced game, where losing orientation will be the death of you every time.

Graphics always matter except in Interactive Fiction, Text Adventures, etc.
The question is the functionality of those graphics in the game. Sometimes they have relative importance and could be interchangeable or freely updated, remastered, other times the graphic are the proper narrative and/or the gameplay focus themselves, games where the quality or the specific art direction is deeply tied to the game and its sense.

You can have an interactive fiction game with graphics, much like you can have an illustrated novel.

Also, one could make a graphic-less game that has RPG-style combat in it, getting an RPG that doesn't need graphics. Actually, it occurrec to me that Progress Quest could be considered an RPG that doesn't have graphics (and has the rather unusual characteristic of being a 0-player game).

There's also the possibility of audiogames, games where there's no graphics and the game conveys information to the player solely through audio. One way such a game could be made is to start with interactive fiction and record every single text message in the game, giving you an interactive audiobook that could be considered a game. (The quality of such a game depends on the creator's investment; using text-to-speech won't give the best results, but if professional voice actors are hired, the game could sound quite good.) I note that, in this instance, sound plays the role that graphics play in more conventional games.

Specially in Europe since the very beginning of Interactive fiction those kind of text games had graphics bundled as adding attractiveness or added value.
But exceptions aside, they could be deleted and the game could be functional per se. That's what I mean with the word importance. The spirit and sense of the game was the text and descriptions. In the other hand, other more modern and evolved IF examples where created with graphics in mind, to help the parser, like those Legend Interactive Adventures. But the fact was that you could convert the game in a pure text game and it was equally playable without any loss, just pressing a key. So, in fact even in those cases, the interactive graphics where only an attractive redundance, two ways to play the same game mixing graphics adventures or pure text adventure ad player taste.

About the recorded games, it is a very interesting concept. Never thought much about it but it very interesting and experimental. specially for vision impairment persons. No idea if it exists as something noticeable. It should.

greetngs

I can understand why you might think so when you only look at the screenshots. But I've already played the game for about 15 hours and I have to say that when you actually play the game everything is really clear and I never had any problems to see or understand what's going on.

For me Loop Hero is a prime example for a really good working and also good looking pixel game.

I wish that it weren't so grotesquely, sinfully, interferingly ugly, because the game play appeals to me.

Same here.
That, and no free saving were IMO the biggest issues with the game. And the latter could be fixed by using the console.

Graphics matter when it plays part in the story the game tries to tell.

That and obviously graphics play a huge part in technological progress. Envisioning something in a virtual space can also help science tremendously. Video games can also be seen as a way to push the boundaries of graphical simulation.

Even in the early 90s we had games like Super Mario World and Frontier. Broth are outstanding graphically but one is vastly more complex in its simulation than another. Without graphically advanced games such as Elite, we wouldn't have proper space games. Imagine a world without Star Control but I'd rather not.

What I mean is, there is space (heh) for all sorts of games, the small indies with simplified graphics and vision and the giant AAA projects that push the boundaries of what graphics and the progress mean for many other companies and even some indies.

Well, I'll take your word for it working good. But good looking... nope, to me it's just plain ugly.

IMO art direction and design are much more important than graphical fidelity. Old games with strong, cohesive art design aesthetics still often work well for me. At the same time...

... I have a hard time going back to simple, "pixel hunts" of the past. I'm old enough to have grown up through the first commercial personal / home computers and game systems -- I played those games after the text-based adventures -- but I cannot easily go back... and I've tried.

So, I'd love the modern graphical push toward quasi-photorealism, right? Nope. I find that games that look too "realistic" feed my level of anxiety, and work contrary -- in my case -- to a game's purpose of being fun; I find that I enjoy games representing life but not finely simulating life.

What about games that aren't trying to tell a story?

(I actually put story quite low on importance when it comes to games (except when it negatively impacts the game by being long an unskipable (or only partially skipable), or if it contains problematic elements); I consider music to be more important, for example.)

to be honest, i can only think of examples where older games don't translate all to well to modern day resolutions. Nvidia's integer modus on the other hand does a great job of translating older games to the monitor. Of course some games are indefinitely ugly but most times i found that it actually suits the games quite well. I belief i never stopped playing a game in the past 5 years or so because the graphics where to ugly by design.

also... now who is insane enough to not like what most would describe as beauty by default, nature's symmetry is burned into our genes, sooooo

ya know ;-P