And he's very wrong too!

Plenty of people love pixel art, and that's cool; it's just not applicable to everyone.

Personally, I struggle playing platformers/isometric games and don't like pixel art, so neither of the games you listed fit me in any capacity (seriously, they cause me pain on a near-physical level), and I would struggle playing them even if I liked the genre overall (and I do like sandboxes, for example; just make it fully 3-dimensional and add some decently detailed textures, at least!).

So, the point I'm trying to make is that, graphics is important, not necessarily in terms of realism, but in terms of catering to the respective audience. People do care about how the game looks, and while you'd prefer pixel art (and it too can be good AND bad), I'd strongly prefer realism, and as good as the game can be, I'm not gonna play it if it's retro-oriented.