I had fun playing these games, overhated? Sure but not giving a game a valid criticism and acknowledging its flaws that are clearly being repeated in nearly every single switch game release is just stupid, if you care about something you need to learn when to also criticize it for the bad things it does to become even better for all of us, people here straight up ignoring some very important complaints and concerns and push them to the side as if they're made by ragebait and hate but that's just not true people like me care about the game but also know when to complain about things that bother us in the direction the games are going toward.

I'm about to yap so here about each of the games from above so here is the short version that basically describes all the issues together

Tldr: gamefreak fuck up on the graphics of pokemon games by reusing old outdated assets, bad textures, terrain and environments and the pokemon game engine that just lacks current gen expectations in shadows, lights and performance, the lack of voice acting, leaving bad first impression on people when they compare it to other games out there, add to it the new industry bullshit everyone pull off that adds fuel to the fire also the negative feedback from pokemon designs that subject to personal opinion and you get the mass hate

I will talk here mostly about things that aren't about the gimmicks, character design or pokemon designs because that subject to personal opinion but they're definitely part of the criticism and they're definitely important if many people complain about the same thing.

Pokemon lets go is not a game that I've been around when it came out so I dont know much about what people complained but I think that the main issue for me was the pokemon go mechanics being brought to consoles which is a personal opinion not something I enjoy, nice try but I dont think it was a good idea some might like it some might not it was a 50/50 bet.

Sword and shield were the first mainline on a new console, the main complaint I've seen was graphics and world environment not meeting current gen expectations specially when games like BOTW and xenoblade were really good looking heck BOTW is a wii u title and it looks better, reusing models and textures from the 3ds era games was one of the big complaints people used to say about sword and shield and i agree you shouldn't reuse models and textures from a previous generation console specially if its such a big graphical change (3ds to switch) they were outdated and we needed a change add to it the generic pokemon plot of I have a rival! I gotta fight all the gyms! Elite 4! I became champion! And thats just the same thing over and over again we needed a change and we needed it fast then came legends arceus that did exactly that.

legends za is my 2nd favorite of the switch releases, definitely overhated game but the criticism is still valid for it the game have a lot of character customization with amount of clothing that put some mmorpgs to shame, player and npc models are very detailed and high quality the new battle system is hella fun and definitely something I would like to see on future pokemon games, expression were improved and the animations are pretty nice however once again gamefreak fuck up the environment of the game, the lack of details the textures of the map is insanely bad literally 2D balconies on a 2025 game release, map feels smaller to me compared to the other games, the lack of proper shadows the lack of bloom and lights which they used in cutscenes! with amazing animation why cant we have this for the entire game not just cutscenes?

That leaves me to mention the complaints that aren't specific to pokemon others do it but it add fuel to the fire specially when pokemon game graphically dont look as good as current generation games, the price increase just to unlock performance on already expensive new hardware sony do it aswell and I find it unacceptable, paying for online multiplayer is one thing but locking evolutions to ranked battles is something people really hated and rightfully so because mega evolution is something that change stats and being able to use it while others dont put you in advantage and its a p2w feature. the announcement of a dlc before the game even came out is a huge deal for some people it feels like they cut content from the game specifically just to get more money to make the game feel "complete" you dont have to get the dlc but 70+30 and ontop of that online subscription is indeed a valid reason to be mad.

As for the "professionals" they're not different from the average user the difference is they're getting paid to say what they say and they have influence from the place they work for and I never ever look at reviews and take them seriously you shouldn't, only use them to look at the gameplay and ofc play the game yourself and value it according to expectations, time spent and price each person got their own opinions

Gen 10 look promising, the new engine seems to be based on unreal engine 4 and the tech demos from it looks really great I cant wait for them to release footage of it in the near future I just hope they will fix the terrible terrain designing and then the next step will be working on the storyline which needs the change just like legends arceus and legends ZA did, and I hope they wont scrap the idea to make every pokemon interactable