Nope, just a general statement. I am active on a lot of old school PC gaming style forums filled with people who want more games like the classics but then get all mad when indie games look like indie games. It's irritating.

I agree about 3 years ago I bought a bunch of second hand hi-fi equipment for peanuts (although the record deck cost an arm and a leg) I now have the choice betweeen vinyl, casette tape (may buy a reel to reel sometime) and cd all have different qualities this has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread other than to agree that personal experiences and preferences differ and every format has its pro's and con's which vary from person to person.
I actually feel that the graphics in SYABH are in context with its Victorian style game setting, in the end, it's just a matter of personal choice.

I don't have a complaint about how the graphics look because that doesn't mean much to me in terms of whether or not I like the game.

But I do wonder how well optimized this game is. Man I'm getting slow frame rates on a monster gaming PC. For comparative purposes, Skyrim, Far Cry 3, and many other graphically intense games run great maxed out.

Am I the only one seeing this???

Nope, you aren´t! It´s not a pretty well-performing game, but this is quite linked to the fact that good textures would cost any performance! With excellent textures Sir would be performing the same, but would look ways better, so you wouldn´t recognice it beeing that poorly optimised. The good part is that the game let you adjust the settings quite easyly...

Currently, I´m reviewing a high-end gaming notebook with a GTX 980m and it got no troubles at running it at stable 60 FPS. (with ~50% load) On my 680m this wasn´t always the case and it was main-time on full load. So, am I right that you´re using something in the range of a GTX 660 or 7870? Then it´s really nothing with your system and just with the game... :(
Nobody around ever complained about the style. The point is that the game is WASTING lots of it graphic potential to poor Textures and low shadow resolution!

Numbertwist and you really meant a 680? Or did you mean 860m?
Anyways, if it is a 860m your performance is regular. Nothing to worry about, it´s just the game performing that bad! ;)

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-860m

Okay, I just set the graphics option to LOWEST levels, and still choppy.

This is either the worst optimized game in the history of games, or this is an issue with that goddamned "Optimus" technology where it's insisting on running with the onboard Intel adapter.

Either way, looks like I'm not playing this game. At least not on this laptop. If I get my desktop(s) up and running again, I'll give it a try there.

Important: The game does NOT run out of the box on the Nvidia-GPU and the driver profile is not the one compatible with the current version of the game as the exe-name has been changed. (Nvidia only lists the non-patched version) You have to manually add the Exe to the list and set preffered GPU to Nvidia!