I think the main issue with Gen 8's designs is that they're so aggressive about being Bri'ish and don't even think about trying to make the Pokemon look and feel organic in any way. Cinderace is just blatantly a soccer player, Mr. Rime is just Chaplin, G Weezing is your typical bing bong british man complete with wacky silly smokestacks, Obstagoon is just a walking KISS reference, etc.
Other Pokemon and even generations aren't immune to this either, people loved calling Braviary the AMERICA Pokemon and its a fun time, but unlike Unova, Galar just does the same shallow joke again and again and again. Here's the smokestacks because they're British, here's a walking teapot because they're British, here's a soccer player, here's stonehenge. Do you get it? It's a british Pokemon, do you GET IT??
In other generations when a Pokemon has very clear inspiration on something, said Pokemon still retains an air of originality that gets people interested in them even if they don't know the origin. For example, Mawile is based off of a futakuchi-onna, but even if you didn't know that, the cute face with the bigass jaws still leaves a big impression on you anyways. Bombirdier is based off the fable of storks delivering babies to people, but it twists the concept by turning it to a fucking asshole that drops stuff for fun, making an otherwise boring as shit concept new and fun.
You don't get that with Galar mons, and in turn, if you don't appreciate the WE ARE BRITISH joke, then these mons do nothing for you. I think that's why when it comes to popular Pokemon from the generation, people gravitate to ones that are actually just fucking Pokemon and not one note jokes, like Dragapult and Grimmsnarl.
