Yeah same here, lots of folks I know in real life were hyped for it, bought it, liked it, and never seemed to have any issue with the number of Pokemon.

It does go to show that while it's easy for a highly vocal group on the internet to seem like a huge, overpowering movement, this rarely reflects the attitudes of the average Joe. It's like how certain forums or sites become echo chambers, and if you spend a lot of time there you'd get the false impression that almost everybody is far-left/far-right, when in fact its just a very loud minority all gathered together.

Customer review are just a bunch of trolls and people who don't like the changes trying to drag it down.  Sitting at an 82 on meta, reviewers seem to be enjoying thenselves just fine as well as that is a good score.

Much like Death Stranding, the hyperbole over a score in the low 80s is real.

I mean, personally, I wouldn't touch this game with a ten foot pole, just like I wouldn't touch Minecraft, GTA, or Animal Crossing, just not my thing, but clearly it's successfully appealing to its target audience with sales like these.

Well let's say that we can't be sure how much of user review were trolls, but people not liking changes isn't invalid complain.

As long as most customers are happy with the game all is good.

Sword and Shield bring features never seen before in prior games from the franchise. So in the end it all comes down to the individual perception of value from the game.

If everybody perception of value were the same as you, most franchise sequels (fighting games in a large proportion) shouldn't exist.

Sure, but you also have to factor in how easily you can access the Pokemon.  To access the older Pokemon in Sun and Moon you'd either need to have purchased the older games, or trade with someone who had.  It's somewhat akin to pre launch DLC.  And, not everyone has the older games, or is going to want to go through the effort of looking online for trades, so for those people, the Pokemon that you can transfer in are irrelevant.

Personally, I played through both of the 3DS games without ever coming across a transferred Pokemon.  I just didn't feel like transferring or   So, for a player like me, the 100 extra Pokemon I will encounter in the base game are more meaningful than the 400 I could trade or transfer.

I don’t care about the extra Pokémons either, I was just stating their argument 

Well people who do not like changes and rate it a 5 or a 6 is a valid complaint.  Giving a game a zero for no other reason than personal preference is what I am refering to as invalid.  Anything below a 5 is pretty much just a degree of how unplayable a broken game is.

On that I totally agree, I can't think of a mainline pokemon game being less than 5 or 6 for anyone that is a gamer and not trolling. Sure I wouldn't buy a game I feel is a 6, but at least I can accept someone that loves other Pokemon games being flustered with one entry and venting out with a bad score that perhaps in 1 or 2 months will cool down and rate the game an acceptable 8.