Animation Lock: Why don't you like it?

[Alhanelem]

Basically a game is greatly enhanced by good aesthetics, and my experience is therefore greatly determined by its aesthetics"

Yes, a game is enhanced by good aesthetic characteristics. the game experience as a whole- not the gameplay specifically. graphics, audio, gameplay, these are all peices of a pie. none of these inherently make either of the other ones better- but the more delicious each one is, the better the overall experience is. That being said, none of these should come at the expense of the others. With rare exception, obnoxiously excessive animation locks (like XI, and XIV 1.0 had) are detrimental to gameplay- the overall experience either stays the same at best, or deteriorates. The pie does not get bigger.

Animation BLENDING mostly solves this problem by preventing sudden action changes from looking too unnatural- thereby improving the aesthetics to some degree without impacting gameplay. Animation BLENDING = yay. Animation LOCK = nay.

aesthetics are important but they are not everything. A beautiful game with shiatty gameplay is still a shiatty game, but an ugly game with good gameplay can still be a good game.