News outlets are only panning the game because it's no longer the contrarian narrative and the gameplay seems to actually be passable.
Notice how all the same criticisms applied to Sword and Shield as well and yet you heard nothing but praise from the same outlets. They're trying to make Legends: Arceus flop so that we get more sterile visual novel garbage like Sun/Moon/USUM/Sword/Shield forever.
I sincerely hope /vp/ doesn't let this be another Gen 5. We can't just let it sell "okay" like those games did, we need it to be a commercial success if we're ever to get back on the same track that the first six gens were on.