I disagree, I think a lot of raytraced shaders successful make the game look better while still leaning into the stylized look. I also think it’s unfair to say the game looks bad originally. It doesn’t look realistic, but it has a consistent and compelling visual style.

Look at the Minecraft update trailers for example. They go in that direction even further, by simplifying all of the textures. Yet even with the perfect offline path tracing, it doesn’t look bad.