The videogame with the best armor design so far is Mordhau
MORDHAU ARMORMany aesthetics which have become standard in fantasy armor designs: spikes, serrated edges, upscaled pauldrons, glowing bits, floating parts, skulls everywhere, extraneous details like many belts, excessive ornamentation, proportions from WoW's Samwise who got his from Joe Madureira who got his from anime, look silly at best -not cool. Some attempts at, "mature" design have also failed, as seen in Game of Thrones, where the color palette's reduced to black and gray.
In this context, rendering model meshes, textures, and other game assets from real-world references is refreshing, iconoclastic, and outstanding. The market doesn't want for more anime-derived goofyness with crystals. Even some of the most popular recent animes, like Goblin Slayer and Vinland Saga, have made a point of depicting more realistic armor. Even the less down-to-earth manga like Berserk still have a baseline of realism with the gear for most of the men in the armies so when a unique armor is wild-looking, like the Berserk armor, it's special. Likewise one of the most popular jrpgs, Dark Souls, successfully used more realistic armor like a bucket helm.
Fantastical armor can be cool if it does something more rarely-seen, like armor made of flesh
FLESH ARMOR
![[Linked Image]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/ed/71/e8ed71ed43df6181ba08b54c6459ae63.jpg)
I'm not suggesting gamers would prefer a 1:1 adaptation of future-armor into a medieval style. My point's if an asset's supposed to be fantastical then make it weird and other-worldly, not the same metal with gems added.