As long as it isn't too frequent I don't think it will bother me either. But even if it is, I'm sure there's a fan patch somewhere that addresses it.

I haven't played those two, but the screenshots look alright to me, so I guess I'm okay with it, if it isn't too distracting. I'm not totally strict about the consistency, but in some cases it makes the games look unprofessional and unpolished, as if the devs had no sense of style whatsoever or didn't really care for consistency at all. So maybe I would draw the line roughly between "this looks like a concept" and "this looks lazy and uninspired" (quite subjective, of course) .

People who bitch about that are overreacting.

I don't necessarily like it, but it is SO MINOR and has little to no effect on gameplay which I think is the concern for most people who moan about it.

It's not frequent. And most of times it's just a matter of pressing one key to have the (cool) effect go. I think there was just one quest where you had to seek more more medicaments, but most of times it's just the occasional immersive gimmick, easy to shrug away.

I can't really recall a game where it was just the visual style that bothered me. But in general I don't really like cartoonish graphics. I had issues with the gameplay in Warcraft 3, but the cartoon-like graphics style wasn't to my liking either.

I think Stardew Valley and Starbound look ok. I just went through Stardew Valley screenshots and the only instance of mixed bittage is the fishing line here. All other things seem to be ok - see, for example, the weapon motion blur here -- properly pixellized. Starbound is more suspect but far from the worst offender. Here are some more examples:

Death Road to Canada
Okhlos
Unworthy
Mother Russia Bleeds
Aegis Defenders
Double Kick Heroes
Riot - Civil Unrest
Wuppo
The Final Station
NeuroVoider
Conga Master
Wizard of Legend

Personally, I go from "don't like it" to "can't stand it" and only forgive AGS adventures for scaling character sprites. (Better mixed-bit proportional scaling than fixed-bit autoscaling, and I can't really blame an AGS dev for cutting costs).

I also hate shitty fonts, which is something English releases of Japanese games are often guilty of. Gentium is free, go use it.

I hated the malaria effect, personally. I am so sick most of the time (just got home from an 8 day hospital stay) that the last thing I want to do is get into a game that simulates being sick. I want to play as a superhuman badass in a game, not as a sick and broken down schlub like I am in real life.