I came into this with the lowest expectations possible. The online discourse around its release was palpable. I ended up picking it up anyway a few months after and to my joyous surprise, I actually really enjoyed it.
It is of course flawed in that the progression is completely fucked. I started out by trying to go to clearly late-game areas very early which was a blast! I then wondered how would the game deal with this: simple, it doesn't. I was then stuck with zero challenge for the 2nd half until the very end and even that was laughable. How the fuck did Geeta get her job she has a Gogoat?
For me this was all made up for by a few things. Screwed as it's progression is, it is finally an actual open world pokemon entry and the parts that work really work. Wild encounters feel great and the overworld is very well crafted if a bit graphically inferior to other switch titles.
What really made everything up to me though was it's soundtrack and characters. Pokémon soundtracks have always been great but this one is a different beast entirely. Team Star's boss music is one of Nintendo's all-time greatest compositions and instrumentations.
The main characters all have something incredibly compelling about them and they genuinely feel like childhood friends instead of faceless rivals. They're at their absolute best in the post-game chapter which I did not expect for a second to be as breath-taking as it was.
If Gamefreak takes one thing from this it's that they absolutely CAN make something reminiscent of BW. They just need to try a little bit harder.