Graphics always important, and those game graphics considered as state-of-the-art back then. It's just which direction the devs made, did they put only graphics into focus or struck balance between graphics and good story and gameplay. Talking about racing games I play A LOT of GT2 back then and I still play it today, emulated on PC. Here's a screenshot. That video you posted, if you play the game a lot you know which race gives a very good car that you can either sell for tons of money (and he did pointed that out), or you can use one straight (especially race cars that don't need tuneups). It's not a grind as long as you buy the RIGHT first car and play the right few race, just do all the license and youre good to go. Nowadays I just either download savegames that gives rare cars, or I just use cheats to stop timer so I get gold in each license so I get the prized car for each test, and some of those are great car you can use straight for races. Yeah back then everybody and their grandma buy Escudo to win races, now I use hardest car to drive to win races, TVR Speed 12 and Espace F1 are two of such cars. Also I set challenges to put as little horsepower as possible and try to win races purely by skills. It's fun this way to me IMO rather than use OP cars to win races, also it hones driving skills. I also play GT4 as well as I haven't get time to really invested playing it back then (went to college to take my Diploma and Degree). It's a spiritual successor to GT2 IMO, and I finally can play on Nurburgring. I also noticed GT3 and GT4 was easier than GT2, later found out both game have ASM ON by default (Active Stabilty Management) so when you go around corner and press accelerator hard (PS2/PS3 have pressure sensitive buttons) it won't make the tires spin either by slowing doown or limiting the throttle input so you can tackle any corner with any sort of drivetrain with ease. I disable them (and reduce or disable traction control too) and made driving much more fun.
I can always put shader effects and mod the hell out of it on emulator but I could say I'm a purist, I rarely mod any games I play, at least graphically (upscaling is another story so it won't look pixelated on FHD screen) except for certain occasion, I tried to mod GTAIV with ENBmods graphics back then in 2012 I still have screenshot of it. Doesn't look too bad but it's more of a curiosity. I didn't play GTAIV as much as San Andreas because for me overall story was worse. One of reason I hate Cyberpunk2077 is because of its crappy ending, and overall story is just meh, there are few great moments but those are far between and some events seems rushed. Still playing San Andreas till this day, from start to finish, without cheat and only mods I use it the one that fixed the bugs in-game, yep replaying those so-called hard missions like Wrong Side of The Tracks and flying RC missions.
I never invested in any multiplayer games, I only play Planetside 2 (F2P games) with my friends, that collects about over 1000 hours but it was fun sometimes (especially double XP weekend) I haven't played one in 4 years. I buy Battlefield V to play with friends but finds out it littered with cheaters/hackers, worse than San Andreas Multiplayer so I only play like 5 hours of it before quitting.
I also play A LOT of Ace Combat series, I started playing from AC3 Electrosphere, and I continue playing the holy trinity in PS2; AC04, AC5 and Zero. I love every singe one of it, gameplay mechanics was amazing, the planes and superplanes were astonishing and each of them comes with truly amazing and unique story that really makes you invested in the whole game and genre. So when Ace Combat 7 was announced and coming for PC I'm VERY HAPPY to hear and I even pre-order it. When it comes out the graphics were simply amazing, some planes were great but storyline was major dogshit. I only replay it 3 times before I put it into rest. I never pre-order anything after this and I'm glad, as I dodged pre-ordering Doom Eternal (for me is dogshit, too arena-like and it's no longer fun for me though I did finished it in Ultra Violence but only once) Doom 2016 struck best balance for me as not being too monkey-on-acid-trip.
Nowadays I never viewed any games as interesting, seeing Starfield made boredface as I know the game will be buggy so it will be a year or two, seeing those remasters/remakes makes me yawn harder than late-nights playing Planetside 2. San Andreas remaster using mobile ports is just UTTER BULLSHIT and an insult to excellent original game. I can wait for games to mature as it become a trend, I play Witcher 3 like 3-4 years after it releases and buy the GOTY version.
Where DirectX 12 being so good that it laid out certain feature levels, lower level of hardware abstract that it would make game devs knows what to do with huge amount of graphics card in the market, but doesn't seem it headed that way either. Just read what Alan Wake 2 requirements you can see how lazy devs are, requiring DLSS/FSR as a requirement to get smooth gameplay. They just relased the game in what I called early Alpha stage and patch them as they go through like nothing. It's better back then when game comes in physical copy where game properly optimized out of the box and fit in CD/DVD thus doesn't require exabyte of data just to properly render sandwiches in 4K.
So the original question; nobody buys games for graphics. That is true, at least for me. I do enjoy Crysis, Metro 2033 but the graphics just compliments the great game it was.
