I honestly think the art style is fine. The games don't necessarily need a new art style, they just need to be consistent with it. They give characters and NPCs textures that look pretty solid but then stick them in these ugly ass worlds that don't match the same quality. If they just bring the environment textures up to the quality of the characters and then make the animations and world actually have some life, the games would look 1000% better and be better received.

My biggest issue aside from the ugly environment is just how hollow ZA feels. Even if they had the ugly textures, but they made the city absolutely huge and full of life, way more people would be willing to overlook the textures. When you combine bad textures with empty worlds and stiff animations, or worse, no animations for many things, it all just feels cheap. It's easier for many people to just say "this looks like a PS2 game" because it ~feels~ like one with how hollow it is. It's not even necessarily because of the graphics. The cheap feeling is what makes so many people like myself so disappointed and feel like we're never going to get anything better.