We had high hopes for switch era Pokemon after gen 6 and 7 felt like the series was going in the wrong direction, and while SwSh flopped I think Legends gave a lot of people hope again for the future. Now there is gen 9. I’m struggling with how little there is to like about it. Its a clear back-step— most obviously in the animations but also the overall design, the music (granted Legends got to reuse Sinnoh’s amazing score), and in terms of GF’s ambitions with this franchise.
Since SV was developed alongside Legends instead of after, my hope (read: cope) is that gen 10 will be the true Next Step in the franchise since it will now have both SV and Legends to build off of. Or was Legends just a one off fluke?
I feel like Legends proved GF was willing to at least put a tiny bit of effort into improving the games and trying new things but SV on the other hand is really just SwSh 2, and that has me worried. It could be the case that Pokemon will not strive to be more than this for a long time.

What are your thoughts? Is there any reason to be hopeful that the future of this franchise can do something great again? or should we accept the advancements in Legends were a fluke and that SwSh and SV really are the new template for what Pokemon games are now?