I think pokemon was so heavily criticized partly because it's developed by a veteran studio that really should be able to do better. And the way it looked bad wasn't so much the art style, but how it was loaded into the game.
You had a lot of pop-ins, things not being animated in the distance, and every npc using the exact same animation at the exact same time, as well as some truly uninspired textures out in the wild.
Gamefreak is clearly capable of better when you look at Beast of Reincarnation or Little Town Hero, they just don't seem to care about pokemon anymore.
This shows cats:10 AI:1, not 1 to 0.