I don’t think I could explain it myself but I agree with him. The facial expressions are ultra cartoony and didn’t have a classic analog. The textures in classic are a lot rougher and while everything as a result just kind of looks like stone, overal it just feels less cartoony than retail which is super clean by comparison.
Also worth noting however that classic back when it was vanilla would have looked better than it does now because the CRT monitors back then would have naturally softened / antialiased those lines, while LCD monitors would not.