Minor spoilers, but not spoilery enough to put a spoiler tag on in my opinion. I'll be describing some of the basic story from the early game.
Buried somewhere in here is an amazing game. The most criticized thing about this game is the graphics and frame rate, and it's easy to see why, even by switch standards it's pretty bad. At its core, the gameplay is really fun. As someone who didn't play PLA, I really liked being able to catch Pokemon in the environment and have a huge world to explore. The only other praise I can really give this game is that the story is good for Pokemon standards. It's not amazing, but it's interesting enough to not completely forget everything the second you finish the game like with Sword and Shield.
Speaking of the story, I wish everything interesting didn't happen in the last hour of the game. Until then there's three main "storylines" that you can follow in any order to complete the game. One is of collecting 8 gym badges to become the champion, which is nothing special if you've played another Pokemon game and is barely a story. The other is a story of taking down the bases of this game's villainous team, team star, which is probably the worst team in a Pokemon game yet. They're literally just school bullies, and the storyline doesn't even make a lot of sense. The last of the three is one of collecting Herba Mystica for a character named Arven, and I actually liked this storyline. Every Pokemon game I've played has exactly one character I actually like, and Arven fills that quota. It's the only storyline that made me feel something other than complete void in my heart. If you've played the game you'll know what I mean when I say the game's story only really gets interesting in the last hour. I consider this a complaint because I think at least some of the concepts could have been sprinkled throughout the game to make it more of a main part of the story. Overall though, the story is fine. It's passable, which makes it a huge step above most other modern Pokemon games.
One of the weirder problems with this game is that you can't go inside the vast majority of buildings. Even shops are just menus that open up when you enter the building, without an interior. It might seem like a minor complaint, but it really bothers me. Obviously Game Freak has a horrible schedule to make these games, this game is very clearly undercooked, but really? It's an open world game! This is the one Pokemon game where they should focus on making a great world to explore, including cities! When you can't go inside buildings, you have much less to explore in each city you visit. Maybe it's unrealistic to be able to go inside building in the world, but when you can't go inside buildings in this game while you can in every other Pokemon game, it makes the cities in Scarlet and Violet feel lifeless in comparison.
For other minor complaints I have, I don't think a lot of the music is really memorable, but some if it is okay, the good songs were probably composed by Toby Fox but whatever. The game doesn't have voice acting, which I don't have a huge problem with unlike some people, but it is pretty disturbing when characters in cutscenes are fully animated with moving mouths but there's no voice coming out of them. There's not a lot of post game content, which I don't have a huge problem with because it's an open world game, you probably didn't explore everything so I think in a lot of open world games the post game content is whatever you didn't do on your first run. I don't like how gym leaders all have the same type Pokemon because if you have one slightly over leveled Pokemon that's super effective towards them that one Pokemon completely sweeps them and the battles become easy and boring, but at this point it's just the formula they've followed for 30 years. Also the Ed Sheeran song that plays in the credits is really boring.
It might sound like I have more negative things to say than positive things, and I do, but the gameplay is so fun that I can look past the bad parts of the game. I mean, I completed the dex. That's gotta count for something. After playing Pokemon Sword, I was so emotionally divorced from the Pokemon series that I thought I would never play a Pokemon game again. I don't think Sword and Shield is a horrible game, it's just mediocre, but playing that game made me realize I was just sick of the Pokemon formula. I'm saying this as someone who started playing from XY, so I can't imagine how people who grew up playing the series from even earlier felt playing such a mediocre game. This game was enough of a change in the formula that I feel interested in Pokemon again.
Buried somewhere in here is an amazing game. The most criticized thing about this game is the graphics and frame rate, and it's easy to see why, even by switch standards it's pretty bad. At its core, the gameplay is really fun. As someone who didn't play PLA, I really liked being able to catch Pokemon in the environment and have a huge world to explore. The only other praise I can really give this game is that the story is good for Pokemon standards. It's not amazing, but it's interesting enough to not completely forget everything the second you finish the game like with Sword and Shield.
Speaking of the story, I wish everything interesting didn't happen in the last hour of the game. Until then there's three main "storylines" that you can follow in any order to complete the game. One is of collecting 8 gym badges to become the champion, which is nothing special if you've played another Pokemon game and is barely a story. The other is a story of taking down the bases of this game's villainous team, team star, which is probably the worst team in a Pokemon game yet. They're literally just school bullies, and the storyline doesn't even make a lot of sense. The last of the three is one of collecting Herba Mystica for a character named Arven, and I actually liked this storyline. Every Pokemon game I've played has exactly one character I actually like, and Arven fills that quota. It's the only storyline that made me feel something other than complete void in my heart. If you've played the game you'll know what I mean when I say the game's story only really gets interesting in the last hour. I consider this a complaint because I think at least some of the concepts could have been sprinkled throughout the game to make it more of a main part of the story. Overall though, the story is fine. It's passable, which makes it a huge step above most other modern Pokemon games.
One of the weirder problems with this game is that you can't go inside the vast majority of buildings. Even shops are just menus that open up when you enter the building, without an interior. It might seem like a minor complaint, but it really bothers me. Obviously Game Freak has a horrible schedule to make these games, this game is very clearly undercooked, but really? It's an open world game! This is the one Pokemon game where they should focus on making a great world to explore, including cities! When you can't go inside buildings, you have much less to explore in each city you visit. Maybe it's unrealistic to be able to go inside building in the world, but when you can't go inside buildings in this game while you can in every other Pokemon game, it makes the cities in Scarlet and Violet feel lifeless in comparison.
For other minor complaints I have, I don't think a lot of the music is really memorable, but some if it is okay, the good songs were probably composed by Toby Fox but whatever. The game doesn't have voice acting, which I don't have a huge problem with unlike some people, but it is pretty disturbing when characters in cutscenes are fully animated with moving mouths but there's no voice coming out of them. There's not a lot of post game content, which I don't have a huge problem with because it's an open world game, you probably didn't explore everything so I think in a lot of open world games the post game content is whatever you didn't do on your first run. I don't like how gym leaders all have the same type Pokemon because if you have one slightly over leveled Pokemon that's super effective towards them that one Pokemon completely sweeps them and the battles become easy and boring, but at this point it's just the formula they've followed for 30 years. Also the Ed Sheeran song that plays in the credits is really boring.
It might sound like I have more negative things to say than positive things, and I do, but the gameplay is so fun that I can look past the bad parts of the game. I mean, I completed the dex. That's gotta count for something. After playing Pokemon Sword, I was so emotionally divorced from the Pokemon series that I thought I would never play a Pokemon game again. I don't think Sword and Shield is a horrible game, it's just mediocre, but playing that game made me realize I was just sick of the Pokemon formula. I'm saying this as someone who started playing from XY, so I can't imagine how people who grew up playing the series from even earlier felt playing such a mediocre game. This game was enough of a change in the formula that I feel interested in Pokemon again.