I thank you for the explanation but if it is a lost art why are so many 2d games being made by 1 or 3 people teams that look pretty good.
Maybe we are talking about different kinds of 2d?
We might be. I'm talking about well done 2D art in an isometric perspective with a high quality of backgrounds, sprites, and animations. One could say it's almost a painterly style. Something that requires knowledge of perspective to make things read as 3D due to the isometric view. As much crap as I give the IE games, it has some of the best executed art of that type of RPG.
A lot of the top 2D games being made are not really RPGs. We're talking tons and tons of platform games. And while some of these look amazing due to their backgrounds (see below), they have some distinct advantages over an isometric 2D rpg. For one, the animations only need the side profile perspective. Even in bullet hell games, like Binding of Issac, they don't offer more than a few views, and even then it's very samey animation.
Compare that to a BG game in which you have to animate various characters from behind, the side, the front, and even diagonals. And don't forget that you need to animate them fighting in melee, ranged weapons, spellcasting, taking consumables, picking up objects (maybe?), lockpicking stuff (maybe), or anything miscellanous that takes up different movements.
Second, because it's a very flat aesthetic, many of these games have a very comic book, anime, animated movie look to them. One of the earliest successes, Super Meat Boy, is a perfect example. Due to the style, there's not much shading or rendering textures. Many of the forms themselves are minimalist in nature with a few lines here and there. So you can iterate quickly and a lot more easily than an artist trying to make something in 2D look more 3D or rendered.
An example in recent RPGs is something like the Banner Saga and to a lesser extent NEO Scavenger. Both use minimalist graphics. Even then, I bet you the Banner Saga Art budget was pretty damn big on a relative scale.
Even if you go back to before the current resurgence games like the Inquisitor did and do look good, and that was a one person team. You have the Coles explaining in great detail how switching to 3d to make the game better was so costly versus their original 2d plan.
For one, I don't believe a damn thing the Coles say when it comes to budgeting. So let's just get that out of the way and put that aside.
Secondly, wasn't Inquisitor developed by Cinemax game studio? Was it really a one person effort? Regardless, I personally don't find the art all that bad, but it's hardly inspired or on par with some better efforts. For you and I, "looks pretty good", might be more than enough. But games have to sell, and a 2D game nowadays has to have good art direction in order to evoke a theme. A lot of Inquisitor is pretty damn generic. There are some good examples of good backgrounds, but a lot of the environment are just grays, washed out greens, and various browns. There's little variation in a variety of the areas. Like I said, there are a few places where the art was very nice though.
Another issue with that game is that a lot of the assets just seemed plopped into the environment, with no sense of space or logic. And it also had its high share of repetitive assets.
Besides, wasn't it in development for like 10 years? I mean that's a pretty crappy example for 2D if it was.