Feel free to disagree with anything I'm about to type, this is just my biased opinion. I realize that not everyone shares my opinions and I don't want to force them on anyone.
Like I said in my first introduction to this thread, from what I heard, I love the music in X. I listen to the soundtrack teaser occasionally, and while some of the songs took some time to get used to, it sounds freaking amazing! I guess it's a bit of an acquired taste for some, but it's fine if someone just doesn't like the soundtrack, that's just their opinion.
As for the faces, I find them pretty refreshing in an age of "super-detailed" and "super-realistic" AAA game faces. They're not trying to be either of those, and I personally think they look pretty aesthetically pleasing.
One comparison I can make is Xenoblade Chonicles: X and Metal Gear Solid 5. I'm a huge fan of both series, and both XC: X and MGS5 look visually incredible, but I was honestly disappointed in MGS5's faces. Instead of modeling character faces by scratch like in all the previous Metal Gear games, they 3D scanned people's faces to get realistic looking faces with minimal effort. And I felt like that made the faces loose some of their appeal. They looked less stylized and interesting than the older games to me. And while they look graphically impressive today, they will eventually look more dated than the faces of previous games in the series due to the aim for realism over design.
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Metal Gear Solid 5
Metal Gear Solid 2
Out of these three games, I think XB: X and MGS2 will continue to look impressive, but MGS5 will look dated by next gen technology. I'm thinking that the reason why a 14 year old PS2 game and a game running on weaker hardware will look less dated than a realistic looking game is because the art styles work around the limitation of the hardware making the look timeless, almost hiding the limitations and making their graphical shortcomings look intentional. While a game going for realism will most likely be topped by the next, more realistic-looking game.
I don't have anything against realistic looking games, but I think they are more of a novelty of their time. They can still look impressive years later, but they will inevitably be topped by another realistic game, which makes them loose some of what made them special at the time. They just don't seem to have the same appeal as a well stylized game.
Whoops, this post went on for longer than I expected