I excitedly began playing this on November 15th, 2019, the day it released. It started out fun enough — the beginning is cinematic, has some nice music and pretty locations... Exploring the Wild Area was novel and enjoyable for me at the time. I spent a lot of time there, actually, squeezing every bit of enjoyment I could out of that place; camping with my Pokémon as they became inadvertently over-leveled, hoarding items I would mostly never use... until I wound up dropping the game for a few years. Over the course of those years, I saw some of the criticism that this game received, and I didn't really get it. Everything seemed fine to the point that I'd played. Oh well, Pokémon fans can be pretty critical at times.

I picked it back up more recently, and pushed ahead with the main story. From there, it just went downhill. Lower, and lower. This sucked. If I weren't so loyal to the Pokémon main series of games, I probably wouldn't have pushed to complete it, especially with how much of a drag the final parts of the game were, wherein an utter lack of content gave way to anticlimactic repetitiveness.

The main thing I have to say is that everything about this game is so surface-level when compared to the other main-series Pokémon games. They tried putting a coat of pretty paint on stuff, but there's nothing of substance behind it. It might fool you for a bit, but it can't keep it up for long at all. It shows in things like the lack of flavor text after leaving the first town, for objects you'd be able to examine in other games (except Scarlet and Violet, which is similar and even worse in that regard), and the inability to enter the majority of buildings. (Of the structures that can be entered, many look near identical to each other, with the exception of buildings one is required to be in for story scenes. They wouldn't want you to miss the few locations they put any effort into designing, after all.) Where new towns in other games often promised crannies to peek into, small discoveries to be made, or unique features... this game largely presents the facade of new towns, where all you can do is pass through them.

In other Pokémon games, there are optional activities to participate in, some of which have a lot of depth to them! TV/radio programs, contests and performances/musicals, underground mining and secret bases, riding Pokémon, flying through the sky from location to location, the Safari Zone, Trick House, little side quests, gambling, photography, an entire second region to journey through (HGSS was just WOW), optional Legendary Pokémon to pursue, Entralink, the ability to pet or walk with one's party members — I could go on and on. There are no such treasure troves of optional content, locations, and features in this game. The most there is to mention here is like, Max Raid Battles and making curry. And you can play fetch with your Pokémon. (I believe it goes without saying, but I'm judging this game based on the $60 USD full game, not based on paid DLC.)

Once you're done in the Wild Area, I felt there's no real incentive to return — it's all behind you — and everything from there is a straight shot from one Gym to the next, broken up only ever so slightly by bits of an absolutely mediocre plot that had so little thought and care put into it. Pokémon games aren't known for their high quality story telling, but this is a new low. I can't even say that it seemed to me like the writers were trying. It felt so lazy, stingy, and stale, and not once did it touch me emotionally. It's devoid of the adventurous magic I've found to varying degrees in the games that came before it, as well as the more recent Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet. The story lacks imagination... They tried going for some plot twists, but they fell completely flat. Most of the characters have so little personality, you could copy the words spoken by one of them and paste them on another character's text box and it might not be apparent at all that you'd done so. There were a couple of main characters who could have been interesting, but the writers just didn't... really do anything with them.
There are a few nice music tracks, but not much I enjoyed relative to most Pokémon game soundtracks.

Overall, this game is an empty disappointment.