The most recent main line Pokemon game I played was Ultra Sun, so this year, I played Pokemon Violet and now started Shield, I have been avoiding playing them for a long while now because they seemed really bad from what I have heard, but I am positively surprised by both!
I finished Violet, and the open world was okay, it had some cool locations but it was filled with ugly brown mountains and felt like a chore to wade through, and there was lots of half baked stuff, but the story and characters were amazing, and I loved the final part with the time machine and everything!

Then I started Shield afterwards, and I honestly think it looks pretty good graphics-wise, they managed to make the UK look good, that is saying something. And I really prefer the more linear with smaller open world sections design of it. I just stated it, but for now, it really seems much better than people let on, how come? I agree that both games would have been a lot better if they didn't rush the devs and gave them more time to work on it