I mean, it can still work if the indie devs make a good game. I know of several games with that indie art style that are still good games, Hyper Light Drifter probably being the biggest example on the list. Games with this artstyle hardly ever try to impress anyone with it, instead just choosing it for budget reasons, not unlike Minecraft, and we know how that one ended. In Smash.

I get what point is being made here, but more than anything, the main take here is the "graphics don't matter" mentality being proved further correct, specially when the specific model of Athena here was taken from possibly the worst King of Fighters mainline game that even my brother who grew up with that game found it overly boring and not worth the money. The "actual artists" working for it did jackshit to save it.

sometimes, it's not even pixel art, it's a 3d model rendered in pixel art