I don't see what's wrong with simple designs or ones that mimic real world animals more closely. There are so many creative things you can do by stylizing real world animals, and I happen to think T-Rex design great as it is. Pokemon was never about mashing together parts of different animals, or being 100% off the wall. It was about battling monsters that made stylized references to real world objects and animals.
That's what made it cool as a kid, at least to my friends and I. We could be like "oh that thing looks like this thing. That's so cool how they gave it super powers". Meanwhile things like Groudon seemed too vague and we barely cared for it. I know taste in aesthetics is subjective, but there was just something cool and there will always be something cool about pokemon making real world references in most of its designs.
That's what made it cool as a kid, at least to my friends and I. We could be like "oh that thing looks like this thing. That's so cool how they gave it super powers". Meanwhile things like Groudon seemed too vague and we barely cared for it. I know taste in aesthetics is subjective, but there was just something cool and there will always be something cool about pokemon making real world references in most of its designs.