>>57076249They really weren't.
For the first new main series entries they weren't a substantial enough upgrade from what was on the 3DS.
The routes and cities felt like standard fare for what was done in SM and the Wild Area somehow felt inferior to Monster Hunter Stories' open area on lesser hardware.
That's to say nothing of all the weird excuses (that ultimately were all lies) for the dex cull. I can completely understand cutting the dex to focus on the quality of assets, animations and game balance except the assets were the same old same old (it wasn't until Legends that they actually substantially changed Pokemon models), most move animations were recycled from Gen 7 and game balance clearly wasn't a factor when for one they introduced one of the most broken legendaries at the time in Zacian-C but also brought back both Lando-T and Incineroar in subsequent updates, completely destroying the meta that the base game had since the old power creep suspects were back, just without Megas and Z-Moves.
It also doesn't help that much of the game just feels like a retread of the sort of themes SM had a mere generation prior. Hop is just Hau redux, we're back to waifus being more important than the actual Pokemon again and despite being on the box, Zacian and the other one whose name I forget because no one cares about it feel like an afterthought. It almost feels like they should have simply made a single game where you choose which doggo you want and put the actual plot important legendary, Eternatus, on the box.
Also the Galar region is fucking boring. Most locations are unmemorable and graphically unimpressive and the few that do look somewhat decent are only such because of how small they are.
Ass games, truly. A terrible showing for the first new generation on the Switch and a terrible effort on Ohmori's part. James Turner somehow doesn't do his home country justice despite being the art director.
