Shift... to cartoon fantasy art style? You mean the style of The Lost Vikings, Rock'n'Roll Racing, Warcraft (all of them), and so on? Any games not in that style are outliers.
These elements were present but better balanced. The cartoon aspect for 16-bit games like Lost Vikings is on point. In Warcraft 2 you had a perfect mix of seriousness / grit with humor. Over the top art AND comic/anime style AND polished don't work for me. It's Fantasy, the subject is already silly, humor can be present but everything else has to be serious, it's a fine balance otherwise it devolves into parody.
Another way to put it is that for me it worked while Samwise contributed but was in check.
Edit: Now I'm not blaming them, from a business perspective they had to follow the shifting zeitgeist and it obviously worked, old school D&D/Warhammer/Heavy Metal/... were totally uncool at the time especially for teenage millennials.