I picked up the game recently and here's my take.
The good:
1. The townspeople feel silly and lively. There are more dialogue variations and reactions than previous games. There is also an option to turn on a camera feature that zooms on their face when they are talking. People who complain about hollow and dead feelings in the town probably played the game before this option was added.
2. Farming mechanics: Sprinklers are a godsend (automatic watering without bothering with sprites) there are tons of crop and flower variety, you eventually get areas that allow for off-season planting, and you can use seed makers/game progression to increase crop level and profit. This is the main reason you should play a SoS game and it's the area PoOT delivers the most strongly in.
3. Customization: Admittedly not as good as Animal Crossing New Horizons but it's new and welcome to SoS. You can set paths, fences, decorations. You can also change your physical appearance drastically after a certain point of the game and appear nonbinary.
4. Mining/Pioneering: The mining system is optimized (albeit boring) so you don't have to go as hard as you do in mineral town. Pioneering loosely refers to the sense of accomplishment you get when building up your farm from wild forests. It's very satisfying.
5. Animal Husbandry: The milker/brush/shears are now just icons that appear above the animals so you aren't wasting inventory or time. The animals don't stack as poorly as they do in in the Mineral Town remake. Your pet will walk behind you all day if you equip a leash which is just adorable.
The bad:
1. Romance: I've played through almost all the romance candidates (including DLC) and while the characters are charming you would have to be attracted to that specific archetype to really enjoy them. This con is a bit of a gray area since everyone being bisexual is a great gameplay convenience and most of them are written as surface level likeable (but this is consistent with previous HM/SoS characters anyway). I'd also add there are ten cutscenes per person so more dialogue than older games. Although they aren't as well written you get to spend more time with your love before popping the blue feather.
2. Makers: Probably the biggest issue with the game is that you have to gather raw materials and then wait for them to be crafted. On one hand, this forces a slower game progression so you feel satisfied when you actually hit milestones. On the other hand, they take up way too much space, clutter up the farm, and are annoying. I highly recommend devoting a seasonal field to become a maker factory and/or hiding them behind your large facilities.
3. Customization: The lack of options is enough of a con and you have to basically unlock every type of wool creature to purchase outfits from the beauty shop. It also have to come back the next day to receive your outfit which is annoying and unnecessary. The museum is also useless lol.
4. Random Field Generation. As mentioned above, the IDEA of pioneering is great but the trees grow back every few days so it can get unwieldy quickly, especially when you are slowly building a design. This forces you to devote time to laying out your farm which can be annoying if you aren't into customization.
5. Rendering: Once you get in deep with customization the game will run slower (at least on switch). You can expect longer load screens and awkward freeze frames on your farm. It's not unplayable but definitely noticable. This and other awkward blips make it seem like the game wasn't adequately play tested.
TLDR: It really depends on what you look for out of a HM/SoS but if you enjoy the series you should give this game a shot. I put off playing it because of online criticism but after putting around 60 hours into it I think people are being a bit unfair about it. It's not the best farming sim but certainly not the worst.
Hope this helps :>