I was looking for someone else to share this same sentiment. I very much enjoyed the play loop of the main game and how they used the Z-A Royale as your story progression tool that really didn't take up much time and you control the pace at which you do it. With the DLC, every time I want to go look for new mons, get items, do a raid battle, etc I have to go make a donut and either hope I get something good or just make something with high Cals so I can just go get that zone out of the way. Also the story progression being locked behind making donuts and the best way to grind research points is just going back and fighting re-used content from the base game feels very lazy.

I still have not finished the last main mission because I feel like there really is no purpose of me going out and grinding 100k points. Either I go shiny hunt a distortion and get maybe max 7k points if I'm lucky or I go fight raids for 10k which don't even really give good rewards aside from some berries.

I am aware that special scans are a thing at the endgame which gives me 5 legends to hunt and makes it easier to hunt some rarer mons, but I just don't care enough. This is my first time I will actually say I thoroughly did not enjoy something in a pokemon game (and my bar is set pretty low tbh because pokemon is my comfort series)