LogFAQs > #977169393

I've never liked his art style. Though part of that might be that I never grew up with Dragon Ball Z like most of the rest of you did.

A large part of what made the early Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games palatable to me was the fact that the limitations of the hardware meant his designs really didn't fully translate from the concept art. And that you never really got to see his version of what the main characters looked like except on box art or concept art. You were really only seeing his monster designs. The fact that later games start showing all of the main characters in his obvious style is part of why I never really got interested in any of the later games.

It's a lot like how I'm not a huge fan of Amano's art in and of itself, but it's effect is extremely limited in the first Final Fantasy game, and still a bit muted in the later SNES games. But if he'd stayed on as lead designer into the PS1/PS2 era, I feel like it would have become overwhelming. Whereas Nomura, for all the flack he gets for his weird belt obsession and goth tendencies, felt like a way better fit for the later games.

Toriyama's art is probably also at least partially the reason why I've never really liked Chrono Trigger even remotely as much as other people seem to (and definitely not as much as I like Chrono Cross).