Something that never seems to come up when one of Jeff's art defense posts come up is that an RPG has a considerably higher asset load than most types of games, not just graphically but all around.

And historically, the genre has responded to this by sacrificing some aspect of polish - typically animation, but also often by just telling you about a thing with text.

What Jeff has done by stocking up and reusing generic assets is essentially a way of reducing that load so that the game actually gets produced on his microbudget targets. And what's really lost in that is any sort of "wow" moment where a distinctive scene, magic item or character design can make an impression visually.

However, I do think he could stand to leverage technology better. 3D might not be nostalgic, but it is the overwhelming preference of devs trying to use generic assets, since it gives you so much more utility(take the sword model and reskin it - new sword! same building with different decor - new scene!) and even puts some stock animation within reach, when relying on Mixamo or similar.

Jeff is already using these kinds of stock assets in the new game, it's just that faithfully implementing them into an old-style 2D tile renderer system makes them look worse than they actually are, since it guarantees that they look inconsistent in scale, perspective, lighting etc.

One productive way to respond to his challenge would be to give him an A/B: license his existing work to a small self-funded team, have them remake it aesthetically without changing how it plays. Have it launch on consoles and mobile. Then we'd really know if the assertions match the reality.