I've just played through pokemon shield, I've beaten the final battle with Hop. it took me about 63 hours.
Around the ice gym is when things got a little hard for me, but it wasn't really a challenge until Raihan, it took me a bunch of tries for me to beat Raihan.
I thought the curry mechanic was fun, as well as how I can use toys to play with them, it's all really endearing.
my party got wiped a few times by some of the major battles, especially the one against zacian, shieldbert, Leon, and the final one against Hop

Before Sword and Shield I've never properly played a pokemon game before, I borrowed pokemon Y and played some of it. But Shield was the first time I thought "yeah, I actually just get it."

I think I really love pokemon now, I've even started watching the anime.
competitive sounded like it could be fun, but it seems impenetrable; everytime it's just dragapult, mimikyu, or cramorant and their abilities always feel really cheap, so unless there's a decent answer to them it seems like poor design.
I also don't like the IV thing, I can't even tell how I'm supposed to read if it's good or not and the game never explained how. Why can't I just train the pokemon I'm attached to for better base stats instead of the eugenics? It both seems antithetical to pokemon's themes and piss ass boring to constantly breed for a viable pokemon.

Otherwise, I really liked it, I want to follow this series now and even played some of the older games.