Honestly... they probably should've switched to AI art, lol. That would've made some old fans into haters, but as long as they used high quality AI art like the western developers (like in My New Girlfriend, Mila AI, Blurring the Walls), there was a chance that they would gain their popularity among new audience.
Animations? They use very dated and probably cheap art, many RPG maker cheap games have better art, and those that also have animations probably have bigger budget than AS titles. Animations are way more expensive than art.
And while most of their titles were kind of repetitive, there were also some interesting premises here and there. The story wasn't the biggest problem, there's a big (relatively) market for repetitive, samey NTR and especially netorase, stories. The samey, dated art was the main reason why their sales staled, though. You can hate on AI all you want, but there's a reason why games like Netorase Phone have more than 100 reviews on f95 and earn their creators 5k$ on patreon monthly. If you know what you're doing, you can create much more fappable art with modern AI than whatever crap cheap artists like those working for AS can provide.
