Double Art Styles

[RCBH928]

What do you guys think when developers use double art styles?
What do I mean by that is that sometimes the characters would be drawn on the cover of a game differently from when they are IN the game. Or sometimes they would draw the icon of the character with a different art style, this is usually seen in RPG's at the bottom of the screen when a supposed character is speaking.

I can't come up with a good example, but here is something close to whats in my mind from a game on iOS

[Retronomy]

It really depends. Sometimes it's understandable when the system brings limitations, such as sprite sizes. But other times, it can get pretty ridiculous. For example, Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, where some of your characters have one look for their overworld sprite, another for their text box, and finally a battle sprite. And with certain characters, they're all inconsistant with each other, down to the colour scheme. (Blue on the overworld, brown in combat.)

[Erik_Twice]

I think consistency is overrated. Many cartoon characters are built completely different from scene to scene and not only you don't think it's weird but it adds to it.

[RCBH928]

It really depends. Sometimes it's understandable when the system brings limitations, such as sprite sizes. But other times, it can get pretty ridiculous. For example, Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, where some of your characters have one look for their overworld sprite, another for their text box, and finally a battle sprite. And with certain characters, they're all inconsistant with each other, down to the colour scheme. (Blue on the overworld, brown in combat.)

haha I tend to like it to a certain extent too, but sometimes it gets pretty hard to figure who is who

[Anapan]

I always hated the Amano sketches. I still can't figure out how/why in Final Fantasy II (4) the characters turned from those fugly gaunt sketchy watercolory things to the 16x24 sprites we all love. Every time I pressed start I told myself "that's not what he really looks like"
How does this equal this ?!?

I know he designed all the FF characters, but I really dislike his art style, and I'm glad not too much of it made it into the final renditions in my favorite games.
I think he was mostly responsible for this topic because most RPGs followed Square's RPG making blueprint and so they all started with realistic sketches and made several pregressively more SuperDeformed renditions of those sketches down to the 16x16 overworld sprites.

[RCBH928]

interesting maybe others can share more examples