I feel the same way about Shadows of Esteren : Though the infectious enthusiasm of the design team and my friend Thomas G. has me buying it up: It comes from the French tradition of incredible detail to fantastical setting, some stereotypical things alongside wild new things, gorgeous “how the fuck did they afford this???” art dripping on every page, all held together by a system that really doesn’t do anything exciting (tho, to be honest, Esteren’s character generation and focus on non-typical stats IS kinda exciting).

BUT!

If you look at the sourcebooks like you do artbooks like on Parkablogs, they are incredible resources (Esteren crew knows this to the point they put out pretty much an “art-only” words-light setting book in their lineup), I would say that they are better at conveying setting, garnering buy-in and assisting in starting play far more than any “big new setting” RPG that was ever produced in N America over the 80s, 90s, 2000s, etc. 

7th Sea/L5R/Tribe 8/Blue Rose: Okay here’s some art, but let me tell you about the world for 30 minutes to get you started; or else you can borrow the book and read 50-200 pages of setting to become familiar with it.

Symbaroum and other games in the Euro (what I label above as French) tradition: “Flip through this book and look at the pictures. {waits two minutes] Got it? Yeah, you got it. You’re locked in. You viscerally understand the setting, and have already honed in on a character type and things in the setting that excite you. It’s been 120 seconds. Let’s play.”
Cohesive. Inspiring. Brilliant. In regards to the setting and the ability to convey it quickly to the reader, that is.
(Sure there’s hundreds of pages of text to go with it as well, but they stand above as art books on their own)

It’s something I’ve been thinking about recently.