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There's just something so nice about prerendered games, they look so crisp and just pop on the screen 
This is lineage 1 a korean mmorpg I've been playing on a private server. I'm planning on downloading diablo, diablo 2, and fallout to keep scratching this itch.
Diablo and star craft I dunno what the effect is specifically but the units looks like toys and that is rad. Baldur's gate had a bit of thsinas well. Is it just set direction? In a design sense what factors combine to give it that look? I don't think I have ever come close to figuring it out.
Often times developers would model units & characters physically in clay, rotate them to capture pics from each angle for isometric projection, digitize them & make sprites out of them. They look like toys because they're basically actual toys! I think Diablo & Starcraft used digital 3d models turned into 2d sprites though, rather than actual models.
The fuck you say? There is a timeline where we could have had actual little diablo 2 sculpture models as treats? And we missed out? I am crestfallen. I would have lost my shit for a little toy quillbeast back in the day
BG3's environments are so densely detailed and include so much verticality that it feels diorama-like. The camera controls add to this feeling, as you can zoom way out and rotate around from every angle and see "cut-outs" of the verticality from the side with x-ray
I think it's just the style of the mid to late 90's cg that gives it that kind of sheen to it, like you said toys.
there's a reason one of the first major CGI films was Toy Story. Early CGI looked like plastic