-MinecraftThe very last thing teenagers back in my day and still now want is to be patronised with cartoon-like graphics. It's why so many of the most successful non-sport games of the last 20 years are the likes of CoD, GTA, Battlefield, PUBG with state of art graphics and realism, which is what you want from a game where you build a big army to kill opponents.
-Mario
-Pokemon
-Animal crossing
-Genshin Impact
-Fortnite
-DOTA
-LOL
You may say the RTS genre have different target customers, but realism is definitely not the one and only art style in the past 20 years. Half of the top50 best selling games are Nintendo games, and we all know Nintendo never aims for realism in graphics.