I bought it. I don't pirate games and always decide on them myself. If I buy a dud then oh well, I'll learn from it. It's rare I buy something and dislike it enough to be bothered though. I think other people can pirate if they want though, I don't make decisions for other people.
I think SS has some good ideas, makes a lot of solid improvements to the presentation, but has some poor execution, and most of its general issues could probably be fixed with more dev time. The presentation is great with a ton of personality. Gym leaders and unique characters have lots of dialogue during battle, the crowds chanting during televised battles is exciting, the region is unique in its atmosphere (might help that I'm a Brit and get most of the references though) and routes are much less broken up into loading zones than ever before. The Wild Area gameplay loop of battling, finding items, dynamax battles, minigames, camping etc. is surprisingly addictive and I really hope the concept remains and is expanded on in future games.
Conversely, the story felt... odd to me. The "main villain" subplot is barely relevant to you personally until very close to the end of the main story. Additionally, the lack of side activies within towns besides talking to NPCs and buying clothes, coupled with the linearity of the routes and the story progression within them, leads to probably the least "open" story in the series after Sun and Moon. Also a few small things like the lack of variety of battle arenas (something SM/USUM excelled at) shows more time would have helped it. The Wild Area has essentially zero relevance to the story additionally. Also the game is still piss easy, nothing changed there.
I like the new 'mon designs, but as always with those, your mileage may vary. I preferred Sun and Moons 'mon designs more overall for what that's worth.
tl;dr, Good ideas and presentation but I think it would be well served by the third version treatment, but some of its ideas are good.
