To be honest no other new gen entry game was this badly reviewed. All of them were getting much better scores both from media and players themselves.

You can say that it's an enjoyable game, might be for some but you can't say this was a good start for gen 8. You also can't say that it's all about nitpicking, every pokemon game had issues that could lead to worse scores but (not surprisingly) they were enjoyed much more than Sw/Sh.

This is a turning point for the franchise, it either gets better or worse. Next game will make it perfectly clear if you should abandon it forever.