So, to further elaborate: what exactly are you looking for, or expecting, that would raise the bar for 2D visuals?
Dropping pixel art and expecting more from devs would be a start.
A lot of indie devs make games using pixel art because it's faster and cheaper to make.
If you make the resolution lower enough, even a programmer can get away with crappy art.
Also, those old games from the 80's had very limited animation. Something around 2-3 frames per animation.
So anyone can make animations by moving a pixel here and there with low resolution images.
Example:
To make things worse, a lot of indie devs just blatantly copy some popular game's sprites and only change things here and there.
It's not uncommon to see indie games having sprites that look identical to those found in Earthbound, Terranigma, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 and others.
They all look like as if they were made by the same person or that they come from the same game.
I believe a lot of those indie devs are just lazy, and most don't even bother learning the basics of art first.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of them never touched a canvas and a brush.
It's ok if you're a solo dev that doesn't have enough time to make your game, but unexcusable for already estabilished gaming companies (I'm looking at you Square-Enix)
This retro trend has been abused for more than 10 years already, as an excuse to make cheap games that never exceed the quality of their inspirations.
It's time for companies to drop that crap and get better. If they could do beautiful 2D art 20 years ago, there's no excuse that they can't do that now.
Vanillaware for instance has been doing HD art for quite a while now. And they put a lot of effort in it. I wish they got more appreciation from the public.
Ubisoft tried with Rayman Origins, but the tone and art style just didn't grab me.
Still, it was nice they put the effort in creating the UbiArt Framework, but unfortunately they haven't been using it for bigger games.
Then we have the devs of Wonder Boy Dragon's Trap, Streets of Rage 4 and Cuphead that use traditional frame-by-frame animation.
I believe those devs are showing us the path. That devs can do better than low res pixel art.
(And are there really no 3D examples? or any 3D titles you'd want to see inspiration from?)
I have, but I'm not in the mood to make an extensive post with examples.
What I have to say is that 3D always had more investment since the 2000s.
Things grew quickly with 3D, and we have some pretty sophisticated methods for photorealistic rendering.
But I also believe photorealism will make 3D games look all the same.
Specially now with very detailed 3D scans and UE5.
2D games require more intimacy to get it right. You can't just drop all the assets in a scene and expect the lighting system to do all the job.
That is, the artist has to "calculate" how things will look, not the computer.
Also, 2D animations always have to be done by hand (no motion capture available) and won't have that "interpolated" look that 3D animations have.