What I mean is that there is a huge disparity between what I read and what I play. If I followed the reading of internet gaming forum I would expect to have in my hand a game that is in an unplayable state, that is broken and definitely ruined by its technical faults.

But this isn't the case, not at all. The game is very good, it could have been better if had no performance issues but only marginally better. The core game is very good and the game plays fine. In an action game it could have affected the gameplay more , but not in a turn based RPG with exploration.

Give me this game every time over Pokemon Sh/Sw, which was basically a corridor without any exploration , any challenge, any interesting thing to do. That was the worst mainline pokemon game by far.I take a more ambitious and more meaty game with som technical problems any day over a shallow and reduced game like the previous was.

Yer but when the bar is always high for Nintendo franchises and then it drops people have a heart attack as they not used to it.

I have no doubt the game is playable as the OP says, but that doesn't mean framerate drops and stutters and tons of graphical glitches don't worsen the experience. The reviews I've seen say the gameplay is great but the glitches and performance issues hurt the overall playability quite a bit.

Pokemon games are not known for their great graphics, the Switch games have all looked like serviceable modern games but GameFreak has clearly never tried to wow anyone with their graphics. Given how much money Pokemon makes it doesn't really make sense that the graphics are just fine and not great, and this causes some people to make absurd claims like the Switch games look like 3DS or Wii lol. But that's not even the issue here. V/S has major framerate issues and graphical glitches. That is completely unacceptable for ANY game, and even more so for a AAA game, and ever more so for a franchise as big as Pokemon, especially a mainline game.

It's clear the game was rushed for the holiday season in order to take the place of Zelda getting pushed back to next year. But this game obviously should have been pushed back a few months as well.

Nintendo should have put out Switch Sports for the holidays once it was finally complete with Golf instead of releasing it unfinished earlier this year, added Advance Wars as well since that game has been done for like 8 months, and gave us a Zelda WW/TP HD double pack (which would be easy enough to put together) for the holidays if they had nothing else ready, rather than releasing a Pokemon game that didn't have time to go through the bug testing phase and so is tarnished by being a buggy mess.

Nintendo is so weird sometimes. They take 5+ years in development on BotW sequel despite being able to use large parts of the previous game clearly wanting to make sure they release another masterpiece that outdoes the original, they take many years on Metroid Prime 4 even after taking the extraordinary step of completely restarting development, yet with first open world Pokemon, which is one of largest releases on the system, they push it out 12 months after two other Pokemon games came out and rush it in an unfinished buggy state. I would think the Nintendo-GameFreak relationship is close enough that Nintendo could tell them hey this game is not ready or bring in a bunch of extra contractors or something for bug testing/fixing prior to release.

Nah, not really. It was rushed because the Pokémon Company needs their yearly holiday release and they also want to keep having a new Pokémon generation every 3 years, meaning the game has to come out now so it doesn't lag behind all their other multimedia stuff.

Don't really think Pokémon release schedules have any tie to other Nintendo games. If anything, it's Nintendo who can feel more comfortable delaying something like Zelda if they know there's a Pokémon release for the holidays.

Imo, if the graphical bugs and glitches are so numerous that you have to "get used to them", then they are impacting the gameplay experience. 

I retro game a lot. I can get used to almost anything. Crappy 3D controls, poor resolutions, absurd amounts of dithering, etc. However, I'm not going to look over that in a modern game. Just like I'm wouldn't look over intense graphical glitches and lack of polish. If it's something that I have to get used to, it's probably impacting my play and it needs to be mentioned. 

The game is certainly playable.

But games are a "package" that are the sum of it's parts, when you have large, glaring technical issues, it does impact the playability of a title.

When a company can sell 10-20 million units per title, then there really is no excuse to invest in the technology to drive cutting edge experiences... Took years for Call of Duty to start investing in it's engine, mostly because of competition from Battlefield and Frostbite taking away potential customers.

Companies understand money.

As for the 3DS comparisons, Sword and Shield had some glaring visual issues that definitely looked like it belonged on the New 3DS XL, I.E. The 2D sprite backdrops being muddy was a prime example, some aspects of the game was a step up with what we saw before however, but there was definitely a degree of inconsistency which shouldn't exist.

But the other issue is that the Switch is able to be docked on a large 75-85" display.. And with it, you do see where the visuals fall short far more readily... And so it's easier for people to pick apart.

I think if the Switch was a restricted to it's tiny display, a lot of the graphics complaints would probably go away.

If you decide to make your console a hybrid you need to make sure that both sides of the equation are catered for and that means using the power of the Switch to have games like Pokémon look and run as good as the Switch allows for when in docked mode after all the switch is more than just a hybrid 3Ds.

I dont see any reason to buy any game at full price or day 1 - likely its gonna change drastically like fixing a ton of bugs or end up almost a completely different game from original launch (like FFXV).

Yep Cyberpunk was fine for me too on base PS4 no less.

Cyberpunk was more playable than this game, you are just doing hard defense for it.