So after watching snippets of leaked footage (some have beaten the game already but I won't spoil you the ending) I can safely say that the new Mario game can be described as lazy in many regards. 

1. Some kingdoms look flat, empty and simplistic. It seems like Nintendo showed only their best kingdoms to the public because the game has a kingdom that is only one color (stage and background) + some clouds to jump on. A heavy downgrade in comparision to Galaxy which was incredibly detailed.

2. The leves are smaller than expected. Particullary the stage with the dinosaur is very small and defeats the purpose of this beast because you're going to use it for less than a minute. There's a kingdom that has 0 interactivity and you can beat it in a couple of minutes.

3. (This is going to be an important reason why some critics may give it a lower score). THE GAME IS SHORT. By my estimates you can beat this game in less than 8 hours (8 hours is probably going to be the avarage) another letdown in comparision to Galaxy that was 20 hours long on average.

No doubt that the game will probably have 95+ on meta but I can see it receive more criticism after the hype dies down.

Could you elaborate on this?

What's strictly necessary to complete the game is rather limited. If you immediately go for the *thank you for playing*, you're going to be done quick. Most moons are optional, about half of them actually only unlock AFTER you've beaten Bowser 

(What I heard, second-hand info)

https://www.youtube.com/user/CGInfernoBlast/videos

This guy has the full let's play of this game and if you count all parts it's 477 minutes long.

You have some weird threads man, and this one is pure speculation from your side.

1) Zelda BotW also looked empty, but we know that wasn't case. We already had plenty of previews for SMO that were extremely positive and nobody wrote that kingdoms are empty and simplistic.

2) Did you actually played game!? Because of what we saw until now levels are not small at all.

3) Nothing point that game is short, actually it seems that game has plenty of content.

I also think Zelda BotW will win more GOTY awards but just because it's bigger and more groundbreaking game, not beacuse reasons you mentioned.

I am pretty sure that you could beat game in speed run even faster (like any other game), but that doesn't mean that game is short.

What is crazy is that I think Nintendo would have almost every GOTY for every gaming publication. Odyssey and BOTW will probably get more than a 90% of those awards.

As said, you can beat the game with 250 moons, but there's over 800 scattered around. So they give you the option to MAKE the game short, if you want to.

This is like a random thread from /v/ or something. I swear I saw the same arguments.

The hype for Mario Odyssey cannot be stopped. It's not gonna go the way you want it lol.

It was his first playthrough how could he make a speed run? I watched most of these videos and he played normally.