Visually it comes up short against the 4 year old~ Breath of the Wild, which itself was a port from a weaker platform... But that game had A-class art direction.

I do need to give props to Game Freak for not just throwing out a target render and actually using in-game footage, full of aliasing artifacts and all, shows they have nothing to hide.
Some of the animations were half rate/quarter rate of the framerate, which stuck out like a sore thumb. (Can be seen at 1:05 in the video with the pokemon bobbing up and down.)

It is still a *massive* step up from Sword and Shield which still retained allot of 3DS level assets for a chunk of it's visual makeup and should never have been ported to Switch in the state it did.

But I personally can't help but want something more. - I'll give it a purchase and a playthrough though, graphics aren't everything, especially in a stylized title like this.

I think we will get it on the Switch 2

Not sure if this was meant sarcastically or not, but Nintendo seems to have a lot on the horizon for 2022, compared to what seems, so far, like a pretty light 2021. Could just be a coincidence, but I would not be entirely shocked if Nintendo is targeting a lot of titles to 2022 to support some form of new hardware whether that's a revision or a new title, and things like Arceus and Splatoon 3 end up as cross gen. 

I don't think you've been wishing for an awful-looking game, so I'm afraid this isn't it. It looks closer to a prototype than what I'd call a full game that this company could deliver. You know, it's going to change, but I don't think by a lot. The open world angle and the fact that Pokémon seem to seamlessly hit themselves on the field rather than having to get through a transition screen are things that go in the right direction, but Game Freak is taking way too long to make these changes.

Game Freak should have considered an expansion when they realized the jump to the Switch would mean something huge for them. Maybe I'm speaking too freely, but the quality of the visuals in both Sword/Shield and Legends (and the scope of the level design in the former, really) speak for themselves. 

It looked like a terrible game and not just graphically, but Pokemon games have been terrible for as long as I can remember and people still love them so I guess it doesn't really matter.

I have mixed feelings about it

Half of Unova Pokemons are very ugly and copycat of the concepts of the original 150 Kanto Pokemons. GF proved they can't design 150 well looking monsters each gen, so they are focusing in making 60-70 better designed Pokemons and fulfilling the Dex with older Pokemons that's the best approach for the main story. It worked pretty well in both Kalos and Alola. Plus with that you can have some 200-250 Pokemons appearing before the League it means variety, BW suffers from repetitive encounters and battles because the smaller DeX, BW 2 corrected that 

Post-game is another thing entirely. Removing Pokemons is essentially removing content from competitive, it's true many Pokemons aren't ever appear on VGC because they are weak, but that are a crappy of useful Pokemons (and moves) that were removed from competitive and that sucks hard

That's said I don't think Legends will be a mainline pokemon, VGC will still be based on Sword and Shield, the Dex and Gameplay won't affect that. I'd better see them choosing 100-150 Pokemins and giving them good animations and assets than having a gargantuan DEX full of ugly animations 

I'm not big into Pokémon myself, but this looks genuinely interesting to me, more the kind of thing I expected from a Switch-gen Pokémon game and a big leap over Sword and Shield. It's too early to say if they'll pull it off, but it definitely looks promising and I appreciate the ambition and freshness.

As far as performance concerns, it's a year away, plenty of time to optimize and polish.

Nah I really mean it. Switch, while an incredible portable console, has a lot of limitations in it's hardware. With a lot of innovative tech that Nvidia is coming up with will hopefully make it into the Switch 2 in some form and should allow the hardware leap to be quite massive assuming something weird doesn't happen. That and then you have Game Freak gaining experience into making open world Pokemon games should be a recipe for a pretty awesome Pokemon on the Switch 2.

I agree with this. I don't need all Pokemon in it, I just want those who fit in the best.