I have played every main Pokemon game since I was a young child, starting with Pokemon Blue. I had Blue, Yellow, Silver, Diamond, Ruby, Black, Y, Sun and several remakes.

The last gen, I had played hundreds and hundreds of hours  off X/Y and Sun/Moon.

But I barely played 22 hours of Sword/Shield

I never cared enough to boot it up again after finishing the main story.

I did not even bother to catch that ugly looking Sword looking legendary pokemon.

I barely remember anything about this game except that atrocious giant pokemon gimmick, that uninteresting and annoying kid that kept appearing everywhere , these very shallow environment and paths.

That wild areas concept hit nothing for me. I could not remember one Pokemon I had in my team while I spend hundred of hours battling in the previous games.

That was the first Pokemon game I did not enjoy at all.

I just started Pokemon Arceus and it's already much morre interesting that this Sword/Shield game.

I haven't bought Sword and Shield. I didn't want to support the corner cutting GameFreak does to its games, and the national dex cut was the last straw. I refuse to get another pokemon game until they add them all again.

Idk, since I haven't played any Pokémon games before the Switch. That said Sword isn't anywhere near as bad as many people say. Despite that it's still the lowest rated new, non remake mainline Pokémon duo.

No dungeons, incredibly linear routes (even more than in Sun and Moon), towns/citys with an outrageous amount of buildings that seem important but are just there as visual decoration, a town with literally just a Poké Center on it, a story that intentionally and with no respect to the player importance constantly keeps him away from the action just to tell him what amazing things happened off screen, a story that never really gives the player any sense of urgency until the very end of the game (and by that point I just didn't care), a journey that is all about going from town to town and collect badges without any kind of bigger event going in the background like in the previous games, an hour and a half "postgame" about flying to previous towns to beat the crap out of weak Dynamax Pokémon and two guys no one cares about, the true post game is behind a 30 dollars paywall (and even with the DLC the game is not worth it), a Wild Area that gets very old after 20 minutes and with an online system that makes the whole place a graphical mess (not to mention how unreliable the online Raid system is)... and many things I'm probably forgetting.

The huge problem for me is that Sword and Shield is a horrible, HORRIBLE Pokémon journey. The adventure factor is terribly designed. It's not about the National Dex. Is not about the animations. Is not about the lies. Is not about the trees. It's about how bad Sword and Shield fail to make you feel part of a big journey that is not just about being the very best and catch them all, but exploring a new region, getting lost, finding stuff, and facing a greater threat that is constantly present and trying to opose you. Previous entries like S/M and X/Y were already weaker in this regard, but not even close to what Sword and Shield brought to the table.

As a Pokémon adventure, Sword and Shield are without a doubt the worst mainline Pokémon game.

Yes. And You know what's worst? By the end of switch's lifecycle those games might end up being the most successful pokémon games ever.

So if you can't compare Sword to previous games from your own experiences, how can you then declare an opinion that has no baseline? You even gave non-anecdotal, objective reasoning for why SS are the worst mainline games.

That's like saying Metal Gear Survive isn't that bad of a game, as long as you ignore Metal Gear Solid 1-5.

Great sum up. It's exactly how I have felt about Pokemon Sword/Shield. It has nothing to do with graphics or animations.

That whole world, that whole map feels lifeless and pointless. There is nothing to explore and there is nothing interesting in it. The Wild areas are boring and useless. There are no big caves, there are no big moutains, deserts, there are no cruise ships, there are stand ou areas like the big castle of X/Y. Even Sun/Moon which was already very linear was more interesting to travel. The lack of anything that looks like a dungeon or areas to explore and battle is a huge letdowns. Just halls and small linerar roads with no standout cities.

Galar is awful, empty, boring and uninteresting. Everything is small, shallow, handed on a plate.

Yes, it's a very pathetic game. No dungeons, no story, shallow routes, a useless ugly a messy wild area, small game (I beat it in 14 hours), empty cities, dexit

I can't really think in a single positive thing about this game

i haven't played it... but honestly i was very very disappointed with sun/moon, I really missed some of the stuff of X&Y... after that for me let's go was a very decent game and now im trying arceus but still don't have an opinion but im liking what im seeing (apart from the graphics...)

Same here. And I'm finding that I don't miss Pokemon as much as I thought I might. Too many good games out there that feel like the devs really put their all behind them. It would be one thing if SS was a humongous leap in terms of graphics, visuals and animations, but Pokemon games continue to feel like the bare minimum of what one can expect out of the console they're on. The Stadium games on N64 are almost a quarter century old at this point and have models with more life and animation in them than anything GameFreak has done. I say this with no hyperbole.