This is Eiyū Densetsu Sāga (Arrow Soft/Micro Cabin, 1984) for PC-88/PC-98, and it's probably one of the first ever computer games to use scanned traditional illustrations instead of pixel art drawn on a computer. But because it's 1984, you only have eight colours and a very low resolution. The resulting imagery is recognizably different from something done pixel by pixel, but it doesn't look like you're looking at a painting instead. It's a bit soft, a bit unreal. It feels like a scene from a dream. I love it.
Also fascinating to me: it was rereleased on the Sharp MZ-2500, and that version features totally redrawn traditional pixel art. It's interesting directly comparing the same scenes and how different they feel in a different style under different technical constraints.
More screenshots are available here: https://www.mobygames.com/game/eiy-densetsu-sga
we shared that 1-bit painting-style pixel art a while back, this is totally different
