Why do people hate these games again? Story is serviceable but probably the worst thing about the game, but the new Pokémon designs are great and just have this soulful feel unlike the previous gen, dynamax is a great and balanced gimmick and gigantamax improves every design it touches and add some much needed strategy, and they fully embrace the gimmick, making making every gym besides the seventh use it, there are more interesting rivals, the evil team is more interesting than any previous ones, it had a decent amount of pokemon and they made new textures of every pokemon, and theres the exp share. Sadly, you can’t turn it off whenever you want, so you can’t have it on to help a low level team member out a little bit and then turn it off after youre done, so you end up being handholded and overleveled. Theres so much to explore, including a lot of non-linear routes. The last quarter of the game doesn't force any overcomplicated routes or big caves and there’s tons of agency with that. In addition, the pacing is great. And I haven’t even touched on the DLCs yet