The new art is on the generic side and it really looks like taken straight out of a Tales game, but I don't think it can be denied that the visual execution is far more pleasing than what happened in Xenoblade or Xenoblade X. Personal preferences aside, the in-game models of Xenoblade 2 actually nail the anime aesthetic very well, which is exactly what the devs are striving for.
It does give the game - or at least the trailer - a weird vibe, though. It's Xenoblade, but at the same time it doesn't really feel like it. I do like that the environments seem to be more saturated/colorful this time around, though. Xenoblade and X were always a bit too drab for my liking.
It's also still all kinds of weird to me that this is supposed to be a 2017 release. Even if it's "just" the size of the first Xenoblade, a development time of a mere two years strike me as really short. So much so that I even kinda wonder if Nintendo gave the studio a smaller budget this time around.