I mean if I forgo the slight fps drops at some moments which I'm honestly used to anyway on the Switch. It still runs fine with the couple of loading screens, here and there.

But really gotta wonder about the reviewers like IGN calling this game "tutorial heavy and handhold".

Most of it are just short pop up screens and it really does not overstay it's welcome like it did with Dream Team previously.
You don't even get stopped in the middle of a fight for it anymore.

Pace breaker my ass.

Indeed, tutorials have been worse in this series. Aside from that, nowadays it's standard fare for JRPGs to have mountains of tutorials, so there's no reason to single out this game specifically. The same goes for handholding, it's not like anyone wants the Tales series style of being totally obtuse about sidequests.

For me I'm just ready for next gen Switch hardware.  Granted I'm going from 120 fps on my main console to 30 fps, so it jarring.

But more to the point, I'm only a few hours in, but yeah the pace/handholding seems like a very bad take.  I'm not having any issues with the structure thus far. Good game.  

Enjoying the game, framerate issues are a little annoying (worse than Echoes of Wisdom IMO)

It's worse aspect thus far in the beginning is how slow it gets to be going into the more exciting moments of the story so far. Spending the first 6 hours to get the hammers and spend a bit of time with some menial tasks isn't exactly up to my preferred taste. Yet, I like the locals, the traversal, the music and the witty dialogue.

Heard it does pick up later in the game which I'm all for those games with slow beginning, great endings apparently

Finished the game after 46 hours of playtime. It was good to great for the most part, but towards the end it felt like the development team just wanted to add more when it wasn't really necessary. Mario and Luigi's final partner attacks made this feeling worse, because their execution time is notably longer than everything that came before - making battles take much longer - plus it's especially annoying that Mario's final special is basically an all-or-nothing attack; if you don't get an Excellent on it, you do hardly any damage with it. Level ups also became sparse during the final stretch, so ultimately I was at the point where I just wanted the game to be over.

I didn't explore the game in its entirety, but completed more than 50 sidequests. The ones left are probably only about defeating super strong enemies.

In any case, this is a worthy entry into the Mario & Luigi series and the few shortcomings don't change that, because all games have their flaws, and none of them match the brilliance of the first two Paper Mario games.

I am the 5th sea currently, so almost at the end. There are some pacing issues, but overall I really like the gameplay, the locations and overall its charm. There is clearly potential for the series going forward!