anyway, i've had this opinion for a very long time i think but the most common pitfalls video games have in terms of visuals are absolutely lighting and camera movement. you can have the most beautiful character models with pore detail and whatnot but if the lighting engine is too off or the camera has that fuckass Realistic Motion Blur Effect your game is going to look like shovelware from steam.
i don't think i've ever been proven wrong on this, although i'm too vague on lighting criteria i think... basically that too-shiny look*, or putting too much effort into a lighting engine compared to what the art style calls for (also why i think the link's awakening remake and echoes of wisdom don't look good), are the common expressions of bad lighting that i see most often.
once i realized this i couldn't stop noticing it. every time i saw footage of some game and had a "ew, looks cheap and bad" reaction it's been one of those two things. you can make chunky models and low-res textures and stiff animations look intentional and stylistic and therefore Not Bad pretty easily, but if you fuck up the lighting it's just. so over.
*i'm actually kind of soft on the ultra shiny early 2010s-esque lighting engines in no small part to thorhighheels' videos about that aesthetic, termed ~sophistifuture~. check her out if you like video games. she likes video games way more than i do and she finds the beauty in yucky things that i don't like to look at. also her cadence is extremely lulling to me as an autistic person i need her to read audiobooks please. please. please. plea