I think it worked with games that were significantly pushing the envelope, I remember being in awe of the Doom 3 alpha as a teenager. The thing is, I was never going to feel the same awe for the game released a year later that uses that Doom 3 engine but makes some minor improvements.
Traffikrab is definitely a great design.
A couple years back I went through a binge of three different indie monster-tamers on my switch. I thought Cassette Beasts was the least interesting. I was engaged enough to more or less 100% it (pre-dlc), but then I dropped it and barely thought much of it afterwards.
I remember Nexomon Extinction had meh gameplay, but the artwork was pretty, and the story, characters, and dialogue were all really engaging and often funny and kept you moving. Monster Sanctuary was basically the exact opposite, where the plot was totally forgettable and the art was mediocre, but the game mechanics were really well-thought out and fun. I still come back to that one periodically. Cassette Beasts was basically in the middle of these two extremes, it did everything well, but there weren’t any aspects of the game that went far enough beyond “done well” to stand out as memorable.
I wish Eastward had made more of an attempt to tie the plot together. I spent the entire game excited to see how all the details relate and then it just ended with almost no clear explanations at all.
I haven’t really paid much attention to games with better graphics than modern pokemon in a long while, I recently watched the trailer for the new doom game and it did give me that same sense of wow that’s really fucking cool. Not that I will ever play it, even if I could afford it a pc upgrade is not worth the money to me, but it’s impressive to look at.